MORE than £380,000 is set to be spent by Fife Council during the current financial year to repair potholes across south west Fife.

The astonishing figure was revealed in a report on carriageway and footway maintenance in the south of Fife, which also said that a staggering 8171 potholes were fixed in the area during the period of April 2013 to March 2014.

The documents presented to the south west Fife area committee confirmed that the “anticipated cost” of carrying out nine dedicated patching programmes, as well as “ongoing inspection and repairs”, would be £380,121, with £40,910 of that cash earmarked to be spent on work in Oakley and Carnock.

There are 324km of carriageway in south west Fife and in just four months from April to August this year, 2246 repairs were carried out as the cost of pothole works on carriageway roads were shown to have increased by just over 17 per cent from 2009/10. The figure for south Fife was £271,828 but by 2013/14 it had increased to £318,111. The cost of carrying out planned patching repairs on the roads has shown a steeper increase of just under 37 per cent during the same period, rising from £326,862 to £447,242.

Dr Bob McLellan, head of transportation and environmental services, said, “2014/15 is the sixth year of the council’s 10-year investment to safeguard our roads infrastructure and the total investment is £45 million. In addition, we are in the third of a five-year investment of a further £9 million programme of work towards roads maintenance.

“We aim to do first time permanent road safety defect repairs, however there are situations where permanent repairs cannot be delivered, in which case temporary repairs will be used. A number of processes, including new and innovative processes, are considered when carrying out repairs, whether temporary or permanent, to ensure work is cost effective and compliant with the council’s objectives.”