Councillor fury as £173k Valley Road scheme in Barnoldswick scrapped by Lancashire County Council

David Whipp, who represents Pendle Rural on Lancashire County Council, said he was “livid” at the decision to scrap planned works on Valley Road – the only major highways project earmarked for the West Craven area in the last financial year.

The resurfacing scheme had been included in the county council’s highways programme in March 2025, raising hopes among residents that long-standing concerns over deteriorating road conditions would finally be addressed. However, it has now emerged that the project has been withdrawn, leaving the area with no scheduled schemes this year.

Coun Whipp said: “We have road after road that’s literally dropping to bits in front of our eyes, with no action to stop the rot,” he said. “This was the only scheme in the whole of West Craven, and now it’s gone. This year there are no schemes at all here, and very few across Pendle as a whole.”

He criticised what he described as a lack of transparency, claiming it took “months of questioning” before the council confirmed the cancellation. “Residents were already angry about the state of the roads,” he added. “They’ll rightly be incandescent at this latest bombshell.”

Highlighting the condition of Valley Road, Coun Whipp said he personally counted 262 potholes and defects along the 1,000-foot stretch. He argued that the decision to cancel resurfacing contradicted earlier pledges by the Reform-led administration at County Hall to address potholes across Lancashire.

“After promising to fill every pothole before last May’s elections, they’ve instead cancelled resurfacing altogether,” he said. “So much for those promises.”

The councillor also pointed to other locations in urgent need of repair. He described the junction with the A56 outside the Co-op in Earby as “like a lunar landscape”, while saying Meadow Way and Harper Street in Barnoldswick were “more crater than carriageway”.

He also criticised what he called the council’s “patch it” approach to repairs, arguing that temporary fixes were failing to keep pace with the scale of deterioration. “The backlog of potholed roads and streets just keeps getting worse. Resurfacing is in reverse – not so much reformed as sent back to the Dark Ages.”

At a recent meeting of Lancashire County Council, Coun Whipp proposed a “root and branch” review of road maintenance policies, alongside a call for increased Government funding to tackle the growing backlog. However, his proposal was voted down by the ruling group.

A spokesperson for Lancashire County Council confirmed that the Valley Road scheme had been removed from its 2025/26 local deterioration programme.

“Due to other emerging priorities, the programme had to be scaled back and this meant that full resurfacing could not be progressed at this time,” the spokesperson said.

They added that targeted patching work is currently being carried out to address the most significant defects and maintain safety on the road in the short term.

The council also confirmed that the full resurfacing scheme – covering the stretch from Rainhall Road to Wellhouse Road – has already been scoped and costed, and could be delivered in future if funding becomes available.

“The road will continue to be monitored through our routine inspection regime,” the spokesperson added.