DETAILS have been released about how £13.7m of extra funding for road repairs in North Yorkshire will be spent.

Leading members of the County Council look set to approve moves ranging from creating a strategic salt store to improve responses to wintry conditions to developing tar recycling sites.

A report to the authority’s Business and Environmental Services Executive meeting states the funding, which was announced by the Government in October, has to be spent before the end of March and “is a very welcome boost”

However, officers said notification of the additional £13.7m funding was received at such a late stage in the financial year, that it had created “a very tight window during the winter months” in which to implement any additional works.

It is proposed to spend more than £4m of the funding on  LED street lighting, £1m on buying surface dressing chippings in advance to save against inflation and almost £400,000 on the development of tar recycling sites.

Other moves include establishing a prefabricated salt store to further boost winter resilience, expand the A645 resurfacing scheme in the south of the county, maintenance works to Broomfield Avenue, Northallerton and a major refurbishment of traffic signals in Scarborough.

The funding will also be used to accelerate future maintenance programme schemes in relation to the UCI and Tour de Yorkshire cycle race routes and to increase the number of small scale pothole repairs.

The largest of the accelerated cycle race route repair schemes, costing £700,000, will be on the A6108 northern approach to Ripon, between North Lees and the clock tower.

When the funding was announced, Councillor Don Mackenzie, North Yorkshire’s Executive Member for Highways, said it would make a significant contribution to repairing the county’s roads.

This is on top of the additional £8m the county council had contributed from its own funds in recent years and the £24m for the rural roads network provided through the York and North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership.

He said: “Highways maintenance is one of North Yorkshire’s highest priorities and is crucial to keep the county on the move and to support economic growth and prosperity.”

The council has to maintain 5,592sq miles of road, 2,734 miles of footway and more than 2,000 bridges.