YORK has been handed £300,000 to repair potholes across the city's road network.

The money has come from the Government's Pothole Repair Fund - a £168 million pot of money councils across England could bid for a share of.

The allocations were announced by the Department for Transport this morning, and show North Yorkshire County Council has been given £5.1 million, while the East Riding of Yorkshire was awarded £2.6 million.

York's £311,253 is enough to fix 5,00 potholes, the Department for Transport has said, but the council has criticised the level of funding.

Cabinet Member for Transport, Cllr David Levene said: “The £300k will repair some potholes in York which of course we welcome but it doesn’t really scratch the surface of the work we want to do to get all of York’s roads into perfect condition, which would require in the region of £80m.

“The comparison between our allocation and North Yorkshire’s, regardless of the differences in our road networks, is staggering. We need some meaningful investment in York’s roads from the Government after having seen millions taken out of our budgets by Government in recent years.

“This comes after previous allocations which have clearly been designed to benefit the south over the north for political gain. Funding allocations for road repairs, as they are in York, should be carried out fairly and based on level of need”.

North Yorkshire has the third largest road network in the country, with more than 6,000 miles of roads. The county council says 5,000km of its minor roads are in need of urgent repair. It estimates it needs to spent £330m to bring its road networks up to a “reasonable” standard.

Chairman of the county council, John Weighell said the council would put in a one-off payment of £5m to match the government funding, bringing the amount they would spend on potholes in North Yorkshire to £10m.

He said the money would be spent on fixing minor routes, which had suffered particularly badly during the wet weather of 2012.

He welcomed the funding, and said: “This will not solve the whole problem but this will help to solve the problem.”

Councillor Gareth Dadd, executive member for highways said it was a “successful bid” for funding for North Yorkshire, as under the traditional formula they would have received £4.8m from the government.