A BACKLOG in maintenance of Powys’s roads and bridges cannot be plugged with current funding allocated, council chiefs have admitted.

The council’s capital programme for 2016/17 includes almost £2m for roads and around £350,000 for work to bridges.

But Cllr John Brunt, the portfolio holder for highways, admitted that both areas had huge backlogs in maintenance work amounting to millions of pounds.

While funding has been found for some work, Cllr Brunt suggested that the council should abandon resurfacing roads for 2016/17 in an effort to save £850,000.

Capital funding has been slashed in recent years, with cash-strapped councils having to consider reducing spending on things such as highway maintenance to balance their budgets. As part of Powys Council’s budget process, the authority is considering extending a moratorium on major schemes to ensure that money is spent on the current infrastructure.

Cllr Brunt said: “For roads the proposed allocation is £1.982m against a projected backlog of over £40m. For bridge strengthening the proposed allocation is £350,000 (projected £8m backlog) whilst for bridge maintenance an allocation of £124,000 is proposed (£9m backlog).

“The council has made available funding of £1.12m for the structural maintenance of roads. It should be noted that there will be no surface dressing programme in 16/17 with £850,000 being removed from the capital programme.

“This is a very cost-effective maintenance technique and its removal will need to be carefully considered in relation to the update of the Highways Asset Management Plan. To reintroduce a meaningful programme a potential growth bid will need to be considered for 17/18.”

The report highlights the problems with the condition of some roads in bridges in Powys with 19 per cent of roads in the county, around 1,100 kilometres, considered to be in the “red category” meaning that they could need work in the future.

Around 20 bridges have already failed assessments and could need work, with half of those having weight restrictions in place. A further 80 bridges are judged to be likely to fail assessments.

To bring those bridges up to standard is estimated to cost more than £8m, while maintenance work to bridges is estimated to cost £9m.