FIVE road authorities in the North-East and North Yorkshire have a combined backlog of road repairs valued at more than £628m, it has emerged.

The huge figure was revealed after Durham County Council revealed its accumulation of highways issues needing to be dealt with had grown yearly since 2012, and had reached more than £191m - more than ten times its annual road budget of £17.8m.

Without additional funding from the Department of Transport, the council has warned it will rise to more than £330m by 2046.

North Yorkshire County Council estimated the cost of clearing the backlog of maintenance on the county’s roads to be more than £300m, while Darlington Borough Council said it would need just over £43m to carry out repairs to ensure they were its 552km of roads were of a ‘good standard’. The councils in Hartlepool and Stockton reported backlogs of £26m and £68.5m, respectively.

An annual report on the state of the County Durham’s 3,794km of roads, 490 road bridges and 83,027 street lights, states eliminating the backlog over 30 years would require an annual budget of £32.8m.

Councillor Brian Stephens, the authority’s portfolio holder for neighbourhoods and local partnerships, said: “Local government funding has reduced on an unprecedented scale since 2010, but we have done our utmost to ensure the resources we do have for the county’s highways network are put to best use.

“We target our maintenance spending on main roads with the biggest use, but we also have ongoing resurfacing programmes for unclassified roads and footpaths which are bringing about better conditions in those parts of the network as well.”

In a public satisfaction survey carried out last year, just 45 per cent of people in County Durham were satisfied with the condition of roads.

Garage owner Fred Henderson, from Langley Moor, near Durham, said he had come to accept roads in the area were “not very good”.

“If you’re travelling on A and B roads you can go quite a long time before seeing a pothole. Some of the back roads are atrocious, but you just have to drive slowly.”

A spokesman for the North Yorkshire council said the authority took every available opportunity to bid for or make use of additional funding, including, for example, the first bid nationally to the Government’s Local Growth Fund for capital funding to be spent on road maintenance.

He added: “North Yorkshire has a much higher percentage of rural roads than most areas.

“They account for almost 75 per cent of the network, compared to 29 per cent in a typical local authority.”

In County Durham, targeting funding has meant backlogs for work on roads and footpaths have dropped and the council says the condition of A, B and C roads has improved.

Concerns remain about the state of the footpaths and unclassified roads.

A high proportion of its footpaths need resurfacing, with a quarter considered to be structurally unsound and have a repair bill of £51.5m.

Barry Gower, a wheelchair user and secretary of Durham City Access for All, said: “The state of footpaths is certainly an issue for people with visual impairments or for wheelchair users.

“There are some areas of the city where the pavements are very poor.

“The work they have done on part of North Road has certainly improved the surface but at the same time other parts have been neglected and are much worse. The Bailey is now in a dreadful state and it’s almost impossible to use.”