Readers have been sharing their thoughts on the news that Cumbria's roads are set to be hit by a £40million reduction in Government funding over the next four years.

Cumbria County Council’s leader, Stewart Young, has said that the reduction in financial support from Whitehall will deal a blow to highways operations.

Cllr Young said: “On next year’s budget allocations, as everyone’s aware, the Government cut out capital grant for highways by £10million this year which we had understood would be a one-off.

"Unfortunately we’ve had confirmation last week that far from being a one-off it will be continued next year and for the following two years so we’ve not only lost £10million investment this year in our highway network, but we’ll lose another £10million for each of the next three years. So it’s £40million in total.”

Cllr Young said that it is a similar picture in regions across the country, Labour and Conservative led councils alike are “incensed” but the leader said “it looks like it has fallen on deaf ears."

The county council has already set its budget for the 2022/23 financial year.

“I know we agreed at council to put £1.2 million extra into the highways revenue budget but you’ll see that will make very little impact compared to a loss of that scale in investment.

“The public, they see the potholes in the road, they see that roads aren’t getting repaired as they were but they need to understand if we lose that amount of money, there’s only one possible consequence which is that the highways network will deteriorate.”

Readers voiced their frustration and anger over this.

Keith Beattie said: "So much for levelling up! 

"We are very much a forgotten part of the country."

Stephen Martin said: "Coming from someone that's wasted £20m of money on the Amey case and god knows how much on two court cases for the council split that he lost is a bit rich."

Stephen Jackson sarcastically commented: "Levelling up at its best from the government here!"