Councils in England have been given £75 million funding for major road user schemes.
The funding will help to refurbish bridges, improve junctions and boost flood defences as part of a multi-million pound government investment announced by Transport Minister Jesse Norman.
Nineteen projects across the UK will receive a share of £75 million of government investment for essential road maintenance.
Local authorities were challenged to put forward schemes which could make a real difference to road users.

The green light has been given to plans for a state-of-the-art library for Aylesbury which will save Buckinghamshire County Council £87,000 a year.
Buckinghamshire County Council cabinet have approved plans to integrate the lending and reference libraries at a cost of £366,000.

22 per cent of staff working in local government say certain individuals are holding back tech adoption to preserve the status quo, report finds.

Newcastle City Council looks to combat ‘recycling contamination’ as the next stage of communal bins roll out arrives.
The City of Newcastle has seen a worrying development in its blue and communal recycling bin collection with increasing amounts of non-recyclable materials in recent months. These include food waste, nappies, textiles, and black bags of general waste.
This leads to a high percentage of the recycling materials being rejected for recycling, and slows down the recycling sorting process as black bags need to be opened and checked by hand.

The government has launched a £54 million package to transform local communities and release land for thousands of new homes.
The package comes as part of a new cross-government partnership to make smarter use of government-owned property.

Thousands of disadvantaged people and long-term jobseekers are going to receive support to get back into work through six new pilot schemes.

Small businesses could help to power the public sector ‘like never before’ through a new framework agreement.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make up almost 75 per cent of the total number of suppliers on Crown Commercial Service’s (CCS) new National Fuels framework, expected to be worth around £850 million.
The framework supports central government and the wider public sector to procure marine and aviation fuel, Liquid Petroleum Gas, solid fuel, biomass and lubricants and greases, as well as heating oil and fuel for motor vehicles.

New multi-million pound flood defences have been completed in Louth and Horncastle, reducing flood risk to over 350 properties.
The £6.5 million scheme in Louth and £8.1 million one in Horncastle were delivered by the Environment Agency, Lincolnshire County Council, East Lindsey District Council, Anglian Water and the Lindsey Marsh and Withal Third Internal Drainage Boards, with Louth and Horncastle town councils funding continuing maintenance.

Bristol City Council has approved a £1 million investment in its telephone systems to prevent it from collapsing.
£1.5 million has already been spent on setting up a new system, since the current one has a tendency to cut callers off for no reason, but a report submitted to the cabinet identified that an extra £990,000 is necessary to make it better.
The cabinet approved the new funding at a meeting in City Hall.
The system is not reliable and callers are often cut off without warning. The system often collapses, leaving people unable to contact authorities.

A plan proposing to build more than 850 new homes, community and employment facilities on the site of the former Leyland Motors test track site has been approved.