On Friday the Prime Minister announced that after months of campaigning, I have secured an extra £3,322,275 to fight potholes and help fix Northamptonshire roads. This is on top of other money that the Council usually gets for roads from the government.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in the Budget in March that my persistent campaigning on this issue had paid off and he was allocating £200 million in the Budget to fight potholes nationally.
Since then I have been working with the Northamptonshire County Council to make the best application for funds from this sum that we can, and last Friday we finally heard that Northants were getting a more than expected amount.
Northamptonshire has scored very highly in the Department for Transport’s assessment and scored in the highest band across the entire country.
In the past year in my anti-pothole campaign I have organised resident’s surveys, collected signatures on a mass petition, arranged ministerial visits, raised media attention to the local issue and responded to many letters and emails about this issue. Now the hard work of residents in Northampton North has paid off and this extra £3.3million will go to road repairs over the next few months.
The Prime Minister gave interviews last Friday to BBC Radio Northampton, the Chronicle and Echo, the Herald and Post and Heart Radio about this issue, and spoke generously about how my campaign had worked for Northampton. See this week’s papers for more.
You can read more online in the Chronicle and Echo or in the Herald and Post.
Watch this space in the coming months for more on how this money will be spent on road repairs!