I understand drivers’ concerns regarding fuel prices and potholes.

I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement, in the Spring Budget, to maintain fuel duty at current levels for the next 12 months, spending £5 billion on a tax cut worth £100 per driver this year. This will be achieved by keeping the 5p cut in fuel duty that was introduced last year, this is a part of cancelling the scheduled 11p increase in fuel duty.

Freezing fuel duty has been a policy of Conservative Governments since 2011, and taken together with last year’s 5p cut, a typical driver will save £200 since the 5p cut was introduced.

To further support drivers, I welcome the Government’s boost for the budget for pothole repairs; this has come in two recent parts,

The first part is the recent announcement that an additional £8.3 billion will be provided to councils to help them maintain local roads, with £2.8 billion of this has been designated for the South East, South West and East of England roads resurfacing fund to combat the potholes causing misery for drivers. The funding will be delivered over 10 years and is as a result of money that is no longer being used to build the northern leg of HS2.

Further to this East Sussex County Council is investing an additional £15.7m in local highways to strengthen and protect miles of road from the damage that extreme weather is increasingly causing. This includes patching and surface dressing work to repair roads in poor condition, so they’re better protected, and more drainage work to keep water off road surfaces. The additional investment from the county council brings the total highways spend in 2023/24 to almost £50m. There’s lots of information on the ESH website and I would urge everyone who spots an issue on the highways network to report it to the team online:

https://live.eastsussexhighways.com/report-problem

These developments are very promising for all road users, and I am delighted by this recent progress.

Thank you again for all those who took the time to contact me.