£3M to be poured into fixing potholes, pavements and cycle paths across county

Traffic in Burton Street, in Melton - £3M is to be spent fixing road surfaces across Leicestershire

County Hall is investing the money – the equivalent of 30,000 repairs or 75,000 square metres of damaged road – into a major campaign to upgrade the quality of its 2,800-mile network.

Councillor Ozzy O’Shea, cabinet member for highways and transport, said: “We’re working really hard to tackle the wear and tear we see on our roads.

"We’ve got some of the best roads in the country but like other areas, we face an ongoing budget squeeze and growing demand.“Channelling this one-off money into day-to-day maintenance means we can keep up our good work fixing potholes and repairing defects which we know is really important to our residents.”

A huge preventative programme - known as ‘surface dressing’ – also gets underway this summer and will see more than 600,000 square metres of road treated to prevent potholes forming in the first place.