THE pressing need for Scottish Borders Council to increase investment in maintaining and repairing the region’s roads was highlighted last week.

A meeting of SBC’s scrutiny committee heard that 46.3 per cent of the region’s 2,968 kilometres of road are in need of repair – placing the council 28th out of Scotland’s 32 local authorities.

And the situation is set to worsen without a major injection of capital – up to £90 million – over the next five years.

The committee was responding to a request from Ettrick and Yarrow Community Council to judge if current levels of investment were “sufficient to meet the need and the not unreasonable expectation that roads are maintained in a safe condition”.

The watchdog panel heard that, in the current financial year, SBC was spending £3 million from capital - £2.5 million on rural roads and £500,000 on urban routes – on measures such as patching, surface dressing and overlays.

Meanwhile, annual revenue spending on running repairs, such as filling potholes, was set at £3.4 million - despite the Scottish Government including £7m for this purpose in its annual grant aided expenditure (GAE) settlement to the council.

Andrew Drummond Hunt, SBC’s director of commercial services, revealed that, according to the Road Condition Indicator (RCI), by which roads across Scotland are judged, 46.3 per cent of the regional network was now in need of repair.

At current spending levels, this would increase to 65 per cent by 2035 and he estimated that an investment of between £80m and £90m in capital spending was required over the next three five years to meet the RCI best practice level of 30 per cent.

He admitted his council had one of the lowest rates of investment in the road network in Scotland and this was reflected in the condition of roads in the region.

Councillor Gordon Edgar (Ind, Selkirkshire), SBC’s executive member for roads and infrastructure, urged scrutiny to consider if the present budget met the requirements of a network on which, he said, all other council services, including education, depended.

The committee agreed to urge SBC’s executive to “consider ways of further increasing investment in roads and related infrastructure”.

However, the executive is not due to discuss that recommendation until after the 2016/17 budget is set next Thursday.

SBC currently spends £4,044 per km on maintaining the condition of roads, compared to a Scottish average of £5,618.

There are currently 2,968 kilometres of roads in the Borders, comprising 458km of A roads, 600km of B roads, 769km of C roads and 1,141km of U (unclassified) roads.