THE leader of Cumbria County Council has welcomed a huge new funding boost to help repair the county’s flood-ravaged roads and bridges – but has admitted it’s “never enough”.


Stewart Young Stewart Young said that the £82.6 million of Government cash that has been pledged to Cumbria should cover vital repairs to the county’s infrastructure needed in the wake of Storm Desmond.

The latest funding announcement means the total pot available to the county council for these issues is just under £122m following an earlier pledge from transport ministers.

Mr Young said that the authority’s highways team were already using the money on projects to repair the A591 and restore the bridges in Pooley Bridge and Eamont Bridge.

He said: “It’s never enough. We are hoping it will be enough to repair the damage.

“But we would’ve had aspirations to do more than that to make us more resilient.

“We are continuing to talk to the Government but at the moment this is very welcome.”

With about 30 bridges remaining closed following December’s floods, the scale of the job still facing the authority is vast. Mr Young added: “If we hadn’t have got any money we would’ve been in desperate straights.

“We wouldn’t have been able to do this work, in fact we would’ve had to stop doing some.”

A delegation from Cumbria went to London to personally meet with ministers from the Department for Transport in a bid to try and secure extra cash.

The money announced yesterday was in addition to the £58m pledged by George Osborne in this week’s budget that is heading Cumbria’s way to pay for flood defences.

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However, Mr Young said there were two “glaring omissions” from the list of places set to benefit which were also two of the worst-affected towns – Keswick and Cockermouth.

Up to £25m is earmarked for Carlisle while schemes are also planned for Kendal, Appleby, Flimby, Eamont Bridge, Wigton, Pooley Bridge and Braithwaite.

“We think these are big omissions and we are going back to the Government. We think there needs to be money spent there, clearly something else needs doing,” added Mr Young.