FOR motorists queuing along Glasgow's Crow Road during two weeks of major resurfacing there is, at least, light at the end of the tunnel.

But drive along any of the roads that branch off the arterial route on the western edge of the city and it quickly becomes apparent how much work is needed to return them to a passable condition.

Over the past two years, the number of potholes reported to the council has soared from 14,700 a year to more than 25,000. A similar scenario has been encountered in Edinburgh, where the council suffered a 32% increase in potholes last year.

However, while the problems with Scotland's road network have been exposed by two particularly brutal winters, they have – literally – been growing under the surface for a generation.

As today's report by Audit Scotland makes clear, previous recommendations that roads authorities address a growing backlog in maintenance work have been ignored during the economic boom times.

It concluded that 8.5% of the 3200-mile network owned and operated by Scotland's 32 local authorities were now in such a dire state of repair that they would benefit from the sort of major resurfacing work being undertaken on Crow Road, an increase from 6.2% two years ago.

Some areas are significantly worse, with nearly one in five council-owned roads in Argyll and Bute, the worst-performing local authority, placed in the "red" category, requiring urgent repair.

The data comes from a survey undertaken last year, prior to the onset of December's record cold temperatures, suggesting the problems could now be far worse.

Trunk roads and motorways, the responsibility of Government agency Transport Scotland, have also deteriorated, while maintenance expenditure has dropped.

While resurfacing work may offer the best long-term solu-tion, however, it is much more expensive than fixing roads when they are in a relatively healthy state and more resistant to winter weather.

The increase in the number of roads in the red category has also resulted in the level of temporary "patch-up" jobs to fix potholes, despite the fact these are temporary and soon become dislodged. Glasgow alone has carried out 2227 such temporary repairs in the current financial year.

The Society of Chief of Transportation Officers in Scotland (SCTOS), a body representing council roads chiefs, said yesterday it was "no surprise" the condition of local authority roads had continued to deteriorate.

Although council expenditure on maintenance has grown, if the cost of road construction inflation is taken into account, the actual work being carried out has fallen by 13% on local roads over the past five years, while traffic has grown by 22% since 1996.

As well as underspending on roads maintenance by at least £45 million a year, Audit Scotland claimed that councils had also failed to achieve necessary efficiencies.

One-third of Scotland's 32 local authorities – not named by Audit Scotland – still have not developed road asset management plans and "far better information" was needed on costs and performance. Despite calling on councils to work together to achieve efficiencies, none of them had "radically" altered the way they delivered road maintenance services, the report added.

The only example of sharing maintenance work was between Angus, Dundee and Perth & Kinross councils, an arrangement that pre-dates local government reorganisation in 1996.

Neil Greig, director of policy at the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM), said it was "shocking" that fewer than half of Scotland's councils report the detail of maintenance problems to their councillors.

"Audit Scotland has suggested a raft of improvements all of which boil down to simple common sense – is the available money being spent in the best possible way? Amazingly, in 2011 it would seem that we do not yet know the answer to this key question," he said.

"Trunk roads are in a better condition, but even here recent examples of emergency work to repair giant potholes on key motorways are just a taste of the disruption we could be facing in the future.

"The IAM has lobbied for more consistent long term funding for roads but without fundamental reform we risk seeing that money literally being poured down the drain."