Leader of Devon County Council John Hart writes for this title.

There's little doubt the one subject I and my fellow councillors get the most complaints about and that's potholes.

So I was delighted to be able to announce that the county council - due to prudent budget management - has been able to find at least an extra £10 million to put into road repairs over the coming months.

There will be a full paper going to my Cabinet next week but I'm confident of it being approved - I don't think anybody would vote against more cash for potholes.

This isn't a problem unique to Devon. Travel anywhere in the country and you will find people complaining about the state of the roads.

It's a growing issue because our weather is changing. We're getting wetter and wetter winters and the rain is becoming much more intense. Couple that with occasional freezing conditions and an unprecedented number of violent storms and you have the worst possible combination for road surfaces.

The numbers speak for themselves. In the year ending March 2023, we recorded 39,813 potholes. In the 11 months to February 2024, there were 44,260. No matter that in December and January alone we repaired more than 7,000 defects.

So I am really pleased that we are now in a position to make extra money available for road repairs and drainage. I won't pretend that is going to fix everything but it will enable us to do much more.

In my early days on the county council, when Plymouth and Torbay were still part of the authority, it used to be said that Devon had more miles of road than Belgium.

Today the council is still responsible for around 8,000 miles of road and in lots of rural areas we have numerous roads that were originally just farm tracks and now have to cope with heavy tractors and farm equipment, delivery vans and modern cars - often four by fours.

So we are planning to use at least £7.25 million on extensive repairs right across the county. We'll put an extra £2 million into drainage improvements and £750,000 into replacing faded road markings.

The extra money will take our highway maintenance budget this year to over £72 million and I hope you will really notice the difference. 

This potholes boost wasn't the only announcement I’ve made over the past fortnight. I have decided to step down as leader of the county council next month at our annual meeting.

I was elected leader of the opposition Conservative group at County Hall in 2007 and after the 2009 elections I was able to form my first administration after we won a landslide victory. So I've done 15 years as leader of the council and 17 years as leader of the party. 

In the last few months  we’ve concluded an agreement with the Government for £95 million of national funding to support our special needs education and, within weeks, we will hopefully finalise our devolution deal.

And despite the financial woes facing other local authorities, we set a balanced budget for this financial year and  have now been able to find this extra cash for potholes.

 It's been a real privilege and pleasure to serve the people of Devon for so long. Devon is the county in which I grew up and have lived all my life, in which I’ve run my family business, got married - to a Holsworthy girl - and raised my children and it is the county which I love. I’m grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to put something back.