Pothole fixes need a re-think because repairs don't last and the cheapest option isn't always the most cost effective, two councillors said.

Conservative councillor David Brown (Congleton East) and Labour's Ashley Farrall (Macclesfield Central) raised the matter at last week's meeting of Cheshire East's finance sub-committee.

Cllr Brown asked whether capital funding could be used to repair the roads rather than just fixing potholes.

"What I was suggesting is we would spend the capital sum on resurfacing or patch repairing roads, that means we don't have any potholes," he said.

"The problem with potholes is that every time you go and fill one in now, in 12 months' time maybe less, it needs doing again because of the time of the year it's been done."

His comments come after Alsager Nub News told last September how repairing Cheshire East's road network will take a staggering 400 years if the investment from government continued at the same rate.

We revealed how Cheshire East is to press for more funding after highways committee vice chair Laura Crane (Sandbach Ettiley Heath & Wheelock) proposed that committee chairman Cllr Browne write to the DfT outlining the situation and asking for more funding, a move supported unanimously.

At last Wednesday's meeting of Cheshire East's finance sub-committee, Financial director Alex Thompson said potholes can be filled through capital expenditure.

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"You can certainly use capital expenditure of a high value in one year and then pay that off over a long time, as long as you don't keep repeating it, then that is a sound strategy," said Mr Thompson.

Cllr Farrall said: "I think the best way to look at it would be to build a business case for different methods of filling the potholes.

"For level one patch repairs it seems to me the way that we do it currently in Cheshire East is the cheapest and easiest way, but isn't always the most cost effective."

He said some pothole repairs lasted barely a day.

Cllr Nick Mannion (Macclesfield West & Ivy, Lab) said: "Filling the potholes, a level one repair, is a temporary job and obviously patch repair and resurfacing are more long term, so filling the pothole, in my book, isn't appropriate for capital expenditure, it's a temporary revenue job."