A NEW report suggests Worcestershire faces a “tsunami” of road problems over the coming years after the state of the county’s crumbling highways becomes clear.

Worcestershire County Council’s opposition Liberal Democrat leader Liz Tucker has revealed that a huge percentage of the county’s road network is crumbling away beneath the surface and will require major repair work over the next decade.

There are three levels of road repair undertaken – first simply filling in pot holes, then full resurfacing, and finally repairing the entire sub-structure beneath the carriageway.

The report by Coun Tucker’s scrutiny group shows that by 2021, many of the county’s smaller roads will need major sub-structure work.

She said: “This really leapt out at us. If we calculate three county council four-year terms (12 years), we see that about 56 per cent of untreated C roads will need sub-structure work. B roads are about 40 per cent – and nobody even dares estimate what the unclassified roads would be.”

She praised the council for recently investing an extra £15 million in road repairs, but made it clear this had not solved the underlying problem.

She said: “This report emphasises that the work admirably undertaken with the £15 million is not the end of the story. There’s a large amount of work to be done. There’s still that tsunami wave moving towards us. It is not something that can be quickly solved, but it is the responsibility of this council and future councils to make sure we don’t end up in dead trouble.”

A similar report by Coun Tucker last year revealed the council faced a £50 million bill to fix miles of crumbling pavements. The council quickly found an extra £3 million to fix the worst-hit areas.

The authority already spends more than £17 million a year on maintaining roads, but far more will be needed to address the underlying problems.

In a statement, cabinet member for transport Derek Prodger said he was “far from complacent about the challenges which lie ahead.”

He said: “The council will allocate our resources to ensure our critical network can be well maintained with existing funding. However, there are many pressures on the current and foreseeable (funding) allocations that will inevitably prove challenging, both in Worcestershire and the wider UK.

“The council has made a considerable commitment to invest in our roads – over the last 18 months we invested an additional £15 million in urban roads improvements.

“This was followed this year by an additional £3 million in footways. This will be of benefit to the wider network.”