Nearly three times more borough roads were resurfaced in the space of 12 months - compared to five years previously - with the council borrowing money for repairs.

Department of Transport figures show 4.3 miles of road in Bury were fully resurfaced in 2021/22, up from 1.5 miles five years before.

A further 9.8 miles of road were surface dressed, where roads are sprayed with a tar-like substance before stone chippings are spread over the top and rolled in. This can extend a road’s lifetime by 10 years.

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During 2017/18 no roads in Bury were surface dressed.

Across England, only 1,123 miles of road were resurfaced in 2021/22, a 29 per cent fall on the 1,588 miles in 2017/18.

Surface dressing also fell by 34 per cent over the same period.

In the Spring Budget in March, the government announced an extra £200 million would be invested in repairing England's potholes in 2023/24.

Of this, £6.2m will be given to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

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RAC head of policy Simon Williams said: “These figures paint an incredibly stark picture of road maintenance in England and confirm our worst fears about the overall decline in the state of the country’s roads.

“While the government has made more money available to authorities to fill potholes, it’s the general reduction in road improvement work that’s causing potholes to appear in the first place.

“It’s abundantly clear that councils in so many areas are barely scratching the surface when it comes to getting their roads up to a reasonable standard, and indeed the fact that such a large proportion haven’t done any surface dressing or resurfacing at all over a 12-month period really does say it all.

“We encourage local authorities to take a more preventative approach to road maintenance as this will make their squeezed budgets go further and improve England’s roads for the future.

“We also continue to call on the government to increase the roads funding settlements for councils, not least because England’s major roads receive seven times what local roads are given, despite the fact there are seven times more miles of minor roads.”

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In response to the figures, a council spokesperson said: “Official estimates say we need between £6-7m per annum to maintain our roads, but we receive only £3.5m to do so.

“This is why we have borrowed an additional £30m to invest in highway maintenance over a nine-year period.

“The RAC’s comments highlight the importance of surface dressing.

“Because of our highways investment strategy, we have been able to establish a preventative maintenance programme where £1m per annum is invested in surface dressing and micro-asphalt.”

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A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “It’s for local authorities to maintain their highways, and to help them do that we’re investing more than £5bn from 2020 to 2025, with an extra £200m announced at the Budget in March, to resurface roads up and down the country.

“We’ve also brought in new rules to clamp down on utility companies leaving potholes behind after carrying out street works.”

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