IT WOULD cost an eye-watering £100 million to repair every road defect in Fife. 

That's the huge amount of cash it would take to clear the maintenance backlog in one year.

Fife Council officers made the admission at the environment, transportation and climate change scrutiny committee. 

Officers explained that the state of our roads has improved, due to the amount of money ploughed in over the last few years, but warned that they're set to deteriorate if, as expected, the funding for fixing them is set to decrease in the next few years. 

Councillors were informed that the £100m is the theoretical cost of treating the whole of Fife’s road network in one year, and it has increased by 23 per cent since the last reported figure in 2019. 

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It's the figure of how much money it would take to achieve a “network free from carriageway defects”. 

However, the committee report ultimately describes this task as “unattainable in reality”. 

It was also revealed that road conditions throughout the Kingdom have improved by two per cent since the last study was published in 2022. 

That improvement, according to council officers, is largely down to increased investment in the network over the past few years.

The current budget has allocated £9.7m for road improvements this year, but looking ahead that figure is expected to drop to £5m or £6m per year from 2025. 

“If those investment levels don’t increase, it’s very likely that the road condition will deteriorate – which will result in the need for more reactionary repairs and put pressure on revenue maintenance budgets,” councillors were told.