Labour leadership under fire over shocking state of highways

BIRMINGHAM City Council has been slammed for the shocking state of its crumbling streets ~ with less than a mile of road resurfaced in a year.

- NICK HORNER News Reporter

‘The number and size of potholes has increased massively since a cold spell in January.

Now figures for the latest full year, 2024/2025, show that just 1,400 metres were completely resurfaced.

Birmingham has about 2.5 million metres of roads, or around 1,550 miles.

‘The Tory group, who demanded the figures, said it showed a shocking collapse in road repairs as thousands of huge potholes blight streets across the city.

A Tory spokesman said: “This means in the last full year, the effectively bankrupt council only resurfaced 0.056% of the roads across the city.”

‘They said at that rate it would take ‘more than 1,785 years to resurface the whole city’

Birmingham City Council reduced budgets for all nonessential highways maintenance for the financial year 2024/25 due to “the future of PFI funding”

Tory group leader Cllr Robert Alden said: “Just 1,400m resurfaced last year by the council, for context, that is less than one mile of road in a whole year. It is a failure.