MOTORISTS and cyclists will face bone-shaking journeys on county roads after cuts of nearly £3m in the road maintenance budget were approved.

Oxfordshire’s transport boss Councillor David Nimmo Smith said there had been a big increase in the number of potholes repaired by the county council this winter.

But he admitted there was simply not the money to bring the county’s roads up to scratch.

Cllr Nimmo Smith said: “We will still be fixing potholes but we will have to continue to prioritise to ensure the busier routes are dealt with as a priority.

“That does mean, unfortunately, we will not be able to deal with as many potholes as we would like to.”

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The latest figures from the county council showed it fixed 9,580 potholes between November 2014-January 2015, compared with 6,793 the same period the year before.

But Cllr Nimmo Smith admitted the £2.9m cut in the road maintenance budget for 2015/16 would put pressure on the service.

He said: “We’re not ducking the issue. We have been saying that we need £160m to bring our roads up to standard but we haven’t got that money and we’re unlikely to get that money.

“We have a lot less than that and, though not quite a rearguard action, we have to prioritise to keep the roads as best we can.”

Cllr Nimmo Smith explained that an £87m pot of cash awarded to the county in December 2014 would be spent on improving roads as well as fixing potholes over the next six years.

He said: “Some of that will go into capital projects, such as major reconstruction work on roads and some into the maintenance budget.

“It gets to a stage where you need to do something more substantial, like the sort of thing we are doing on London Road, where we are replacing the carriageway. “ The Oxford Mail reported last September that resurfacing all county roads would ake 255 years with the available funding. Yesterday the county council said the estimate was the same.

Th milder winter should mean the road surfaces do not suffer so much.

Cllr Nimmo Smith said: “Last winter and the one before that we were gritting every night for six weeks but this year we haven’t had to.”

Hugh Jaeger, chairman of Bus Users Oxford, reported potholes he spotted at James Street bus stop in Cowley Road and in Woodstock Road.

Simon Hunt, chairman of cycle campaign group Cyclox, said bad road conditions were a constant problem.

He said: “It’s bad news. Prioritising is a fact of life but there are plenty of examples where the main carriageway is in better shape than the area adjacent to the kerb where cyclists go.”