MILLIONS of pounds have been spend on repairing thousands of potholes in Herefordshire, it has been revealed.

Data from a recent freedom of information request revealed that Herefordshire Council spent more than £2.8m in 2023 to 2024, over £1m more than the previous 2022 to 2023 period, where the total spend landed at over £1.7m.

The request showed that the sole contractor the council employed was Balfour Beatty Living Places and that over the 2023 to 2024 period, the contractor had carried out 31,954 pothole repairs on county roads, a slight increase from the 26,071 carried out the previous year.

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The information comes after the council promised last summer to spend over £2.5 million to improve the quality of Herefordshire’s roads.

Herefordshire Council leader Jonathan Lester told a full meeting of councillors last July: “We will be using this tranche of funding to allow our works teams to effectively patch roads across the county, preparing them for surface dressing in the spring of 2024.”

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He added: “We recognise that this is not enough to repair every road surface in the county. But we will work with our public realm partners and local communities to ensure this new investment is targeted appropriately.”

The council was unable to provide statistics on the number of instances where contractors and companies have had to repair their own pothole repair work within six months of the date of carrying out the original pothole repair, but replied that the number of instances involving contractors having to rectify poor pothole repair work carried out in the past three years was zero.

Last October, a separate freedom of information request revealed Herefordshire’s most pothole-plagued roads, with Horseway Head at Staunton on Arrow having over 100 reports of potholes.

Other areas in the county that suffered heavily included the B4360 Kingsland to Cholstrey Road in Leominster and the A4110 near Tremayne, which each had around 60 reported potholes last year.