MERSEY town halls were handed almost £4m of government cash for road maintenance amid warnings of a looming "pothole crisis".
The Department for Transport announced grants including for Liverpool (£0.92m), Knowsley (£0.46m), St Helens (£0.5m), Sefton (£0.65m), Wirral (£0.8m) and Halton (£0.54m), spread across two years.
But the cash – a slice of £215m for local highway authorities across England – is just a third of the estimated £600m of damage caused to local roads from a severe winter.
And it follows a £432m cut in road maintenance budgets across the country in 2011-12 – at the start of the Government’s controversial cuts programme.
Last month, the Local Government Association (LGA) warned of the spread of dangerous potholes if the Government failed to overhaul the way roads maintenance is funded.
Some councils have changed guidelines so that only larger potholes are filled in – or complaints are not answered as quickly – in a desperate attempt to save money.
