YORK highways bosses are to spend an extra £2 million on repairing residential roads and footpaths damaged by the harsh weather of recent years.

The money has been allocated by City of York Council to the highway maintenance budget to improve unclassified carriageways and footways.

The funding will be used to target roads identified through annual surveys of the highways network as being in poor and very poor conditions. The Cabinet is now set to be asked to approve the programme next month.

Andy Binner, Head of Highways and Waste, said that in recent years, York had experienced some of the worst winter and wet weather conditions in 30 years.

"Last year, the council successfully secured a £434,710 national grant towards repairing York’s roads, which is only awarded to authorities in harsh/extreme weather situations," he said.

"The additional £2 million will go a long way to helping to improve residential and local roads and footpaths damaged by these conditions.”

He said the council took every step necessary to ensure problem areas were identified and repairs carried out as quickly as possible so that minimal delays occurred.

"All road repairs that require immediate attention are carried out within 24-hours, and areas which are deemed less immediate are added to a rota and repaired within either three days, two weeks or four weeks."

He said the authority took the safety of all road users very seriously and in order to ensure public safety, all repairs were prioritised according to the level of defect.

"The condition of all York's roads is assessed on an annual basis and repair work is carried out based on this assessment, which adheres to national best practice guidelines."

Cllr David Levene, the authority's new Cabinet Member for Transport, said: “Our road network consistently ranks amongst the best in the region and the country, but we recognise there’s more that can be done.

"We know from listening to residents that roads and footpaths in residential areas are a high priority, which is why we’ve brought forward this targeted funding.”