MID Devon’s roads are set to benefit from a £9.1million restoration programme after the wettest winter on record.

The repairs, set to be completed by March, 2015, were announced by the county council, which has developed a programme of almost 400 repair schemes using Pothole Repair Funding received from the Government to imp-rove the surface or drainage resilience of over 80 miles of roads.

Cllr Stuart Hughes, county council cabinet member for highway management and flood prevention, said: “This additional funding from the Govern-ment is providing us with a comprehensive programme to not only repair our roads, but also protect them.

“As well as targeting potholes we’ll be carrying out more extensive surfacing and drainage work to improve the resilience of our highway network.

“We’re already working on some schemes with Severe Weather Reco-very funding.

“Though the £16million we received from the Government will be made to go a long way it won’t solve all our problems overnight, and as we sustained around £24million worth of damage last winter alone it unfortunately won’t repair everywhere that suffered at the hands of the weather.”

The work is in addition to repairs started in Devon in June using £7million in Severe Weather Recovery funding in response to damage caused over the winter to the county’s 8,000 miles of roads – the biggest highway network of any local authority in the country.

Altogether, the £16million of additional funding for Devon from the Government will repair around 120 miles of roads.

The work schedule has been prioritised with the help of local county councillors.

Around 51,000 potholes in Devon have been filled in so far in 2014 with more to follow in the latest work, but repairs will also focus on surfacing, patching, crack sealing and drainage improvements.

Devon’s road network needs £64million of investment a year to stay in shape.

The county council is also still dealing with repairs from the £18million of damage caused by the storms of 2012-13, funded from capital allocations over the next few years.