THE Government is being called on to recognise the huge financial impact on Somerset of the ongoing clear-up of damage caused by last week’s Storm Chandra.

The county experienced significant disruption and remained this week in ‘major incident’ status as Somerset Council worked with partners in response to flooding.

More than 850 road defects were reported over last weekend alone, including potholes, blocked drains, and other highways issues,.

The near-bankrupt council said highways teams were currently working hard to repair more than 3,500 recent defects across the county.

It said unprecedented levels of rain and flooding across roads during January had created a significant challenge in terms of damage to the network and the cost of repairing it.

Council leader Cllr Bill Revans said: “This is another example of where the national model for funding local councils is broken.

“In Somerset, we are a rural county with a large road network and our geography means we are more vulnerable to flooding.

“With extreme weather and storms becoming more frequent, we want to invest in roads and infrastructure, but find ourselves in a situation where more and more of our budget must be spent on essential, demand-led services like social care.

“We have worked extremely efficiently with limited resources providing a comprehensive maintenance programme in recent years to ensure our network is fit for purpose, but the additional challenge and increasing frequency of these sorts of weather events, means the timely repair of the mounting number of defects will become impossible without additional funding.

“We have yet to assess the full extent of the damage to the roads caused by flooding, but we are already seeing about 60 per cent to 70 per cent more potholes this winter than in previous years due to the extreme weather.

“The cost of fixing those extra potholes alone is likely to be around £1 million before we even consider the cost of repairing roads that are currently under water.

“We will continue to work hard to keep our residents safe and our roads in order, but this again highlights the need for long-awaited reform which properly takes into account the additional pressures on rural counties like Somerset.

“We would appreciate people’s patience on the network while teams try to deal with this damage.”

Cllr Revans said where possible, the authority was trying to divert resources to target the areas with the highest number of defects.

He said: “We have also stepped up our response.

“In November, we had 15 gangs dealing with potholes.

“In response to recent weather, we have almost doubled this resource, as well as deploying additional patching equipment.”

Anybody who sees a defect on a road can quickly and easily report it using a portal on the council’s website.

The council said every reported defect would be visited and assessed, and, depending on risk, it would be repaired in a time-scale of two hours, 24 hours, seven days, or 28 days.

Temporary solutions were also used on occasion, such as traffic management or short-term fixes to ensure road safety.