Revealed: How much damage the Beast from the East caused to Milton Keynes roads

The freeze and thaw effect of the Siberian blast caused cracks in road surfaces to widen and dozens of dangerous new potholes form.

Now, with Spring finally coming, experts fear there motorists will see as many potholes as daffodils on their travels.

This week Milton Keynes conservative councillors called for a thorough review of the wintry weather’s effect on roads all over the city.

This huge pothole is just one of many examples of how the Beast from the East damaged MK's roads

They want all necessary reports to potholes, road signs, lamp posts and crash barriers to be carried out as a matter of urgency.

“I fully appreciate Milton Keynes was not as bad as many parts of the country, but the conditions were still the worst we have seen for many years,” said Olney councillor Peter Geary.

“Everyone who has travelled around MK since the Beast from the East hit, will have noticed the significant increase in the number of potholes and damaged road signs,” he added.

“Not only is it annoying it is also very dangerous. “

The council needs to review the state of the roads and repair what they can urgently. They also need to stop the £100k cut they are proposing to the pothole budget.”

Council leader Pete Marland said: ““The Labour Cabinet recently agreed to an extra £200k funding to bring a new turbo filler to MK and fill at least an extra 5000 potholes before the end of May, more than doubling the number of repairs.

“We did this three weeks ago exactly because it’s fairly obvious to most sensible people the bad weather we’ve had, not just the snow, but wet winter too, has caused more potholes We don’t need a late in the day idea from the Tories stating the obvious.”

“We are already using the extra one-off Government funding to resurface more roads, and in particular fill more pothole clusters rather than just the worst potholes. Sadly the extra cash doesn’t even begin to make up for the £144m of cuts imposed on MK Coucill since 2011, cuts the local Tories seem to be in denial about.”

This week the council leader even tried his hand at fixing potholes when he went out with the highways team.

Pete helped fill a pothole on the Kents Hill estate, just one of hundreds being fixed across MK every week, by breaking up and removing the old surface then filling in the hole with new surface and finally compacting the new tarmac.

He praised Ringway’s efforts and said: “It was really hard and hot work.”