I DON’T drive as many miles these days as I used to. Most of my work involves a commute of walking no more than a couple of yards from the foot of the stairs to my dining room table.

But that wasn’t always the case. In the past I have had commutes of 60 miles or more round trips.

They were great in the spring or summer (especially during the summer holidays when the roads were much quieter) but far less fun in autumn and winter.

Nose-to-tail traffic jams in the dark in rush hour on the M56 or M62 is no one’s idea of fun.

But any driver who does a regular route will soon know where all the hazards are, the bad bends, the busy junctions and the potholes.

For about four or five months, I had to contend with a particularly vicious pothole at a traffic lights controlled junction.

The hole was deep, had sharp edges and got progressively worse. But the real problem was that it was virtually impossible to avoid.

It was a happy day when the council finally got round to filling it in.

So it was with some interest I read the news that Cheshire East Council has signed up for the ‘fix our funds to fix our road’ campaign.

The campaign, which is apolitical, has been launched by the leader of Conservative-controlled Lincolnshire County Council and comes as a response to the fact that many local authorities across the country have seen their funding for highways maintenance and repairs slashed by the Tory government.

The cut in funding comes as a real surprise because I thought the Government had told us that the age of austerity was over.

Apparently, the leader and deputy leader of Cheshire East Council have joined forces with other local authorities to lobby government and demand reverses to cuts to highways funding – so the borough’s decaying roads network can be restored.

The cash for highway maintenance is quite specific with every local authority that’s responsible for roads getting its annual roads maintenance and pothole repair funding from central government with the money being raised from national taxation, including fuel duty.

According to Cheshire East, in the 2019/20 financial year, the council was allocated £19million by the Department for Transport but this was reduced to just under £15.1million for 2021/22 – a cut of 21 per cent.

And don’t underestimate the effect of the cutback. It will allow just 16 miles (or one per cent) of Cheshire East’s 1,674 miles of road network to be repaired this year.

Sounds like drivers in Cheshire East are in for a bumpy ride but maybe the council will be as well.

People, quite rightly, get very worked up about potholes which isn’t surprising given that, according to The Economist, the country’s road quality ranks 37th in the world, finding itself somewhere between Slovenia and Lithuania with councils across the country receiving around 700,000 complaints a year.

But let’s not forget, local authorities that have responsibility for highways maintenance also have a legal duty to maintain roads so they’re safe for everyone to use.

If they don’t and your car is damaged, they leave themselves open to a claim to pay for your repair.

But as Martin Lewis of moneysavingexpert.com says: “It’s important to understand you can only claim anyway if the authority responsible for the road has been negligent.

“So if a cannon ball drops off a truck, causing a pothole which two minutes later damages your car, you’ve no right to claim – there’s nothing the authorities could’ve done to prevent that.

“Even if you are eligible to claim, you have a decision to make. Some argue that compensation deprives authorities of much-needed cash to fix roads – others that the more people pursue their rights, the more incentive there is for authorities to improve the roads to avoid dealing with claims.”

I know councils come in for a lot of stick but I really don’t think they’re to blame for the pothole plague on our roads.

Perhaps it’s time for the Government to put its hand in its pocket and cough up the cash and let the councils do their job properly.