MP rolls up his sleeves and spends afternoon as ‘Lengthsman’ in Grange

South Lakeland MP Tim Farron rolled up his sleeves and spent yesterday afternoon with Grange Lengthsman John Gilmore cleaning local footpaths and inspecting roads and walls in the town.

John as Grange Lengthsman maintains roadside verges and local drainage. The work also deals with small scale maintenance work. John was praised last year by the mayor of Grange-over-Sands for working so diligently for local residents in freezing weather by gritting some of our roads and pavements despite severely depleted supplies of salt and grit.

Tim was hoping to publicise the role of Lengthsman in the hope that other parishes inSouth Lakelandmight choose to employ one too. In March the government announced an additional £6.2million from the Government to fix the potholes inCumbria's roads.Cumbriahas received the fifth biggest allocation of any county inEngland.

Tim has offered has pledged to get involved and physically help the highways authorities to make the repairs and today was part of that pledge.

Tim said: "Being able to roll up my sleeves and join John for the afternoon and clean up local roads was hard work but great fun. Many local residents stopped to thank us for our work - the role of the Lengthsman helps to build pride in the local area and ensures that small problems do not get worse and become big ones!"