SOUTH Craven motorists have been promised repairs in the spring to the district's weather-ravaged roads.

Freezing temperatures, sleet and snow and repeated gritting have taken their toll on the highway network.

Reports of potholes and other damage to road surfaces in North Yorkshire during December and January more than doubled compared to the same period the previous year.

Already this winter, ahead of the latest dip in temperatures, the county council had used nearly 50,000 tonnes of salt and completed over 7,000 gritting runs.

The figure is higher than for the whole of last winter.

County highways chiefs say contractors have carried out emergency pothole repairs for safety reasons – and will continue to do so for the remainder of the winter – and drainage works to reduce standing water on carriageways.

But they add that most of the work will be conducted in the spring, and a programme will be put in place.

"The deterioration in the roads is there for all to see," said County Councillor Don Mackenzie, executive member for highways.

"Come the spring, we will re-start our annual programme of maintenance and repair work when we can make inroads into the damage.

"The 2018 schedule of works includes hundreds of roads which will be patched and dressed and others which will be planed off and completely resurfaced.

"Repairs will be carried out on the basis of prioritisation.

"Maintenance of our vast road network is a top priority and one of our greatest challenges."

The county council has responsibility for about 6,000 miles of roads.

Whilst the weather has been a dominant factor behind the soaring pothole figure, the authority said some of the increase was down to improvements to the online reporting system.

County Councillor Mackenzie added: "We cannot fix every defect but our annual resurfacing and patching programme is leading to an overall improvement over the medium term for principal A roads and other heavily-used routes.

"In recent years not only has the council maintained roads spending, bucking the national trend, but it has spent more on roads than the Government has provided in revenue budget."

He said that by the end of this financial year, the county council will have spent £48 million on road maintenance, and in recent years it has targeted preventative capital repairs.

In 2014, the authority – together with the North Yorkshire and East Riding Local Enterprise Partnership – committed an additional £44m over seven years for rural roads in response to deterioration caused by adverse weather, including flooding.

"This sustained additional targeted investment in the rural network – where the county council has used its own reserves to attract additional central government funding – has delivered significant improvement," said County Cllr Mackenzie.

Potholes and other defects on North Yorkshire roads can be reported at northyorks.gov.uk/report-online.