Out of the £140m funding, £36.5m will be used for areas where the roads have been most damaged by severe weather, taking the total to £80m.

On top of this, an extra £103.5m also being made available to all councils across England. This is in addition to almost £900million already made available for road maintenance this year, bringing total government investment allocated to road maintenance to more than £1billion in 2013/14.

Prime Minister David Cameron said: ‘It’s because of the difficult decisions we have made on public spending that we can afford to repair roads damaged by the severe weather as part of our long-term economic plan to secure Britain’s future and help hardworking people.’

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said: ‘Having the right infrastructure in place to support businesses and hardworking people is a crucial part of our long-term economic plan. This extra money will help make a real difference to the millions of road users and local residents who rely on local roads, giving them safer and smoother journeys.’

The extra funds will be allocated on a formula basis, and will be distributed to the majority of councils in England by the end of this week.

Local authorities will be required to publish information on their websites by the end of August 2014 showing where this money has been spent.