Nearly 50 miles of Swindon’s roads are in such a poor condition they’ll need maintenance in the next year.

Department of Transport figures show 8.4 per cent of the borough’s council-maintained roads – about 47 of the borough's 500 miles – will have suffered significant deterioration.

While that percentage is significantly lower than the national average at 12 per cent, road safety charity Brake is calling for increased investment as it fears the state of the highways could lead to accidents.

A spokesman for the charity said: “Investment in our road network is a must to help prevent the huge cost to society of a serious crash.”

That’s something that chimes with the leader of Swindon Borough Council David Renard.

Speaking as the Local Government Association’s transport spokesman he said said the government spends 43 times more per mile on maintaining national roads than council-controlled ones, which make up 97 per cent of the network.

He added: “With councils facing a £9 billion local roads repair backlog, we need to see the government’s investment in national roads matched by at least the same investment in local roads.”

Coun Renard’s cabinet colleague Maureen Penny has responsibility for highways.

She said: "We maintain and repair more than 500 miles of roads within the borough and we do the best we can with the resources we have at our disposal.

“We don’t pretend our roads are in perfect condition, but we are proactive in tackling defects, particularly if they are deemed to be dangerous.

"It is why each year we run a potholes campaign to encourage local people to report any potholes to us. We fixed more than 7,000 potholes last year, seven times the number that were reported to us, and we completed a range of carriageway repairs.

“We have set aside £3.269m from our capital budget to carry out major improvements to our roads this year, while a further £2m will be spent on routine highway maintenance, which includes £155,000 from the DfT for pothole repairs.

“Tens of millions of pounds in government funding has been secured to upgrade several of our existing major junctions before thousands of new homes are built. But we have a number of other roads in need of significant investment and we simply don’t have the money to complete these repairs.”

“We will continue to lobby for as much money as we can get for the benefit of our local residents.”