FIXING Surrey’s roads today would cost nearly £300 million and require a “magic wand”, the county council has claimed.

The estimated £294million bill covers work ranging from full-scale reconstruction to overhauling broken stretches on around 1,300 miles of residential, rural and town centre roads.

It is on top of the 300 miles of roads being overhauled in Surrey’s Operation Horizon initiative, which also come with a 10-year repairs warranty.

The council repeated its call for it to benefit from the new roads vehicle excise duty funds after the small print of the last Budget indicated it will only be spent on motorways and ‘A’ roads managed by Highways England – amounting to to just 100 miles or Tarmac in Surrey.

The remaining 3,300 miles of roads overseen by the council will not get an extra penny despite the number of miles driven on them every year rising by 100 million since 2010.

Surrey County Council’s cabinet member for highways John Furey said: “While we’d love to wave a magic wand and make all our roads as smooth as Silverstone overnight, it’s just not possible.

“Operation Horizon is doing a good job of providing more than 300 miles of better, longer-lasting surfaces that come with a 10-year guarantee.

“But given that the number of miles driven on our network has risen enormously and local drivers contribute £100 million in vehicle excise duty every year while only getting £20 million back to invest in roads it only seems right they get a better deal.”