A further £500,000 is to be ploughed into road maintenance in Cumbria this year after county councillors backed the injection of funding by the authority's new Conservative and Liberal Democrat-run administration.

An extra £107,000 will be spent on roads in South Lakeland, while Eden will get £74,000 and Barrow £ 59,000.

The cash has been allocated to the county's six local committees, but can only be spent on highways work such as new road markings and signs, patching and filling potholes, and tackling flooding problems.

Council leader Coun Rex Toft said the coalition had honoured its pledge to reverse a decline in highway maintenance spending over recent years.

While welcoming the extra cash, Labour group leader Coun Stewart Young argued local committees should be free to spend the money as they liked, rather than only on road works.