Pot-holes drive us potty in the Potteries, and are worse than ever. So, what is the solution from our Labour led Stoke-on-Trent City Council? The answer will shock you.
In 2025 Labour will CUT the Highways Road Resurfacing and Replacement budget in HALF, allocating only £5 million for road repairs and resurfacing. But it gets worse, because in 2026 what has Labour allocated to spend on our roads – NOTHING!
Yes, you've read that right. The Labour Council's budget confirms the Highways Road Resurfacing and Replacement allocation for 2026 onwards is £0.
When your local Conservatives pointed this out, it rattled some Labour Councillors with their pathetic attempt of decrying this as ‘fake news’.
Well, I’m sorry to tell them that either they haven’t read their own budget or they didn’t understand it before voting for it, because if they check Annex M(i) - page 161 of the Budget Council agenda from the 4th of March 2025 they’ll see it for themselves.
The roads require approximately £10 million a year to stay in their current condition. If you want them to improve, you must budget for the long term. A long term plan is essential as it gives the Highways Department time to plan, consult on road closures and diversions, and ensure utility companies do their upgrades before the works start.
That's what we as Conservatives did between 2019 and 2023. We allocated £39 million to Highways, paying for over 30,000 pot-hole repairs and resurfacing over 1,200 roads and pavements. The amount of tarmac used would have resurfaced a road stretching from Stoke to Milan.
It is a question of priorities. And Labour have them wrong. Labour Councillors have announced £1.5 million spending on two back streets in the city. Queen Street and Wolfe Street. Sure, these were main thoroughfares a few decades ago, but their hay days are long gone. Labour’s plan to spend £1.5 million of your money on ‘gold tarmac’ and fancy granite paving. The last time Labour carried out street improvements like this was in the city centre, when they bought over 200 individual types of granite from China at the cost of millions.
Spending £1.5 million on gold tarmac and some trees will not revitalise these streets, especially when the Labour Chancellor is hitting every type of business with increased taxes and let's not forget Red Ed and his failed promise to cut energy bills.
His ideological pursuit for Greta Thunberg’s Net Zero utopia means our beloved ceramics industry is seeing factory’s turn their kilns off and leaked documents from the Labour government show Net Zero by 2050 would wipe 10 per cent off our GDP, sparking a global financial crash and sending debt and inflation spiralling.
Maybe Labour's decision to stop funding highway resurfacing and repairs from April 2026 onwards is part of their environmental agenda? Labour's solution to pot-holes is to make it so unbearable to drive that you give driving up, and then you no longer hit the moon craters scattering the city streets.
You could get a taxi to visit the road paved with gold tarmac in the back end of Stoke. But expect to pay through the nose for the journey. The Labour Council are banning all petrol and diesel taxis from 2030. No matter how little pollution the latest petrol engines emit, it won’t be allowed to be a cab in Stoke. Taxi drivers will have to put up prices to help pay for their imported Chinese EVs. Though, they may get a discount on the Chinese granite at the same time.
