ROADS most prone to potholes are being targeted by Dorset County Council as it uses a major funding investment to 'keep Dorset moving'.

As reported in January, Dorset was allocated almost £15million to improve road safety, repair potholes and cut congestion.

An additional £1,070,000 was allocated to repair 20,200 potholes, at a cost of £53 per pothole.

It was previously reported that the county council aimed to fix each reported pothole within a month.

However, the council has moved away from reactive pothole repairs and is focusing more on how to prevent them from forming.

Rather than just filling all the potholes individually, the council is targeting the roads most prone to potholes and fixing the whole surface more permanently.

Andrew Martin, service director for highways and emergency planning, said: “When we were granted money from the Pothole Action Fund, the Government urged local highway authorities to move away from reactive pothole repairs and focus on the measures that either prevent them forming in the first place, or carry out work that provides a more extensive and permanent solution.

“Within our Dorset Road Fix maintenance work, we have a programme of defect cluster repairs throughout the county to target sites where expensive, reactive repairs have been carried out and ‘clusters’ of defects are forming in the road.

“These sites will have patching or resurfacing work carried out on them, depending on the nature of the damage, as a more permanent solution to their defect."

Out of the £15million, 76 per cent will be spent on road maintenance during 2017/18 (52 per cent of this will be on resurfacing schemes, 35 per cent on other surface treatments, such as surface dressing, and 13 per cent on patching work).

This means £11.6million will be put towards maintaining 2,550 miles of road.

The council is also currently waiting for a decision on our Challenge Fund Bid, which would provide a further £2million to improve roads linking to rural businesses and key tourist areas.

For more information about Dorset Road Fix go to dorsetforyou.com/Dorset-Road-Fix.