MORE than £2.8 million has been spent on improving roads and filling potholes in the Cowdenbeath area over the last three years - but there's still more to do.

Local councillor Bailey-Lee Robb had asked for a breakdown of the figures to make sure they were getting their "fair share" of the budget.

The Cowdenbeath area committee was also told that, since August 2020, more than 2,800 potholes and defects have been repaired.

Sara Wilson, roads network manager for Fife Council, said: "It is fair. The area roads programme budget is based on the area of roads that are in each committee area so that's fairly split.

Central Fife Times: Fife Council have been spending additional money to try and improve the road network across the Kingdom.Fife Council have been spending additional money to try and improve the road network across the Kingdom. (Image: Fife Council)

"All the other defects that we pick up within network conditioning and are repaired, that's through inspections and we have an inspection regime."

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She continued: "Last year we tended to focus on some larger patching in the Cowdenbeath area, particularly Mossend Terrace, Sinclair Drive, Woodend Place, Seco Place, Rae Street and South Street.

"We're aware there was an issues around Cowdenbeath and we paid particular attention to some of the more urban areas and residential areas.

"There seemed to be some deterioration happening across various areas all at the same time so we will be concentrating on that again next year and looking at some micro-surfacing for some of those places."

Cllr Robb also said that local residents were "frustrated" after using the council's online reporting system to repeatedly ask for potholes to be fixed only to receive no update and for no action to take place.

He added: "That's when we get all the comments on our Facebook or in our emails, 'What are we paying council tax for, why am I taking the time out of my day to report this?'"

Ms Wilson said that, once the council sends an initial response to the customer enquiry and states the prioritisation of pothole repairs, it's "closed off and it's no longer seen on our system".

She continued: "So yes, sometimes people do come back and complain because something wasn't done within the timescale and that's a failing of ourselves.

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"Last year there was such a huge backlog and we did struggle to keep on top of everything and make sure we did everything on time.

"That seems to be levelling out, particularly with the money we've spent across the network.

"You'll have seen a lot of larger permanent patches being carried out rather than the old infill cowpats, as they're generally named, so over time we should see less safety defects popping up."

The report to the committee said that the total spend on roads in the area for 2020-21 was £610,121, in 2021-22 it was £1.24 million and in 2022-23 it was £976,317.

Figures for 2023-24 will be available in April.

For the area roads programme in 2020-21 six carriageway schemes were carried out at a cost of £361,623 followed by five in 2021-22 (£644,283) and three in 2022-23 (£423,318).

Five schemes were completed between April and November of this year but the costs were not available.

Limitations with the council's system for recording safety defects meant they were "unable to give an accurate spend" for fixing potholes and patching roads in the Cowdenbeath area.

Instead the total for each year was based on the average cost of fixing a defect in 2022-23.

Between August 2020 and April 2021 - no work was carried out in the earlier part of the financial year due to Covid - there were 318 repairs at an estimated cost of £127,200.

For the whole of 2021-22 that jumped to 1,006 defects (£402,400), Ms Wilson said there was a "bit of a backlog" after the pandemic, and in 2022-23 there were 803 repairs (£321,200).

Between April and November this year 732 defects were fixed at an estimated cost of £292,800.

Ms Wilson said that the limitations of their recording system meant she couldn't give a "clearer picture" on costs as it outlined the number of locations rather than the total square meterage of roads that was fixed.

She added: "I can only give you a number of defects and one defect could be 10 square metres and another one could be one square metre."