South Lanarkshire Council has said almost £19m has been invested on its roads in the past year.

First established in 2008, the local authority's innovative £126m Roads Investment Programme aims to improve 80% of the council-controlled roads network.

The council is responsible for 2,287km of road network, of which 1,193km are in towns and villages and 1,094km are in the countryside. It is the council's largest single asset with a value of around £3.2bn. Breaking it down further, the council maintains 290km of A class roads, 250km of B class roads, 407km of C class roads and 1,340km of unclassified roads.

Among the roads resurfaced last year, were the A72 Clyde Valley Road in the Hamilton area (£479,000), carriageway resurfacing at Stewartfield Way in East Kilbride (£186,000) and carriageway and footway improvements in the Crawforddyke area of Carluke, at a cost of £210,000. Gordon Mackay, Head of South Lanarkshire Council's Roads and Transportation Services, said: "We are extremely proud of our investment programme and the improvements it has delivered in the past six years. Hopefully the majority of people travelling on our main roads will now be able to notice the substantial improvements.

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"Our main focus for the first few years has been on the main roads and I am pleased to say we have resurfaced a high percentage of them throughout our area. We are now going to concentrate on improving the condition of our residential roads, although we will of course still have main roads that need resurfacing.

"Many of the complaints we continue to receive are about residential roads, so we hope people will begin to notice a difference over the coming years. We really appreciate the public's patience when we are carrying out improvements and we always do everything we can to minimise disruption.

"It's important to remember that although there can be some short-term inconvenience, a resurfaced road has long-term benefits for everyone."

(JP/IT)