Potholes in Macclesfield have been subject to ridicule online. They are a regularly reported on by Macclesfield Nub News, and are subject to memes across community Facebook groups.

Infact, the whole of Cheshire East Council's pothole policy was said to have 'needed a re-think for 2022'.

Now, a budget change has been discussed by Cheshire East councillors.

One councillor suggested Cheshire East needs to invest as much as it can now to improve its highways so it can avoid having to close unsafe roads in the future.

The council had included £7m in its capital programme in 2022/3 and a further £4m in 2023/4 and £4m again in 2024/25 for managing and maintaining highways.

Cllr David Brown (Congleton East, Conservative) suggested an amendment which would see that £4m in both financial years increased to £6m.

He also asked for a major review of highways and transport funding both locally and by lobbying for government grant funding.

This was accepted by the corporate policy committee on Thursday and will be voted on at full council when it considers the medium term financial strategy (budget) on February 24.

Speaking as a visiting councillor, Cllr Brown told the committee the lower investment in the roads, the more the council had to spend on temporary repairs.

"Revenue monies spent on pothole repairs is very costly compared to planned repairs which are more cost effective and last between 10 and 20 times longer."

He said his amendment 'offers the essential pump-priming needed to maintain a level of improvements that is needed to maintain improvement in key problem stretches of the network'.

"This will enable targeted future investment after this period, to be better informed by the results of the highways review," he said.

The additional investment would be paid for by borrowing but Cllr Brown said the borrowing costs will be funded from correlated savings over the three year period, achieved from the revenue budget allocated for pothole repairs.

Highways committee chair Craig Browne (Alderley Edge) said he did have some reservations that the funding was largely reliant on borrowing.

However, the Independent councillor did show support for the amendment.

He said DFT funding for road maintenance is totally inadequate.

Sandbach councillor Laura Crane (Labour) , who is vice chair of highways, welcomed the amendment but said: "Unfortunately, as we all know, this still leaves us woefully short of where we need to be just to stand still.

"With conservative estimates, we are still looking at a shortfall of five or six million a year just standing still with this proposal, with a potential £12m shortfall in fourth year."

The amendment was put forward as the part of MFTS and will be voted on at full council on February 24.