Road maintenance crews will focus on repairing areas rather than individual defects as part of Staffordshire County Council's plans to fix more potholes.

Residents complain to councillors about teams filling in potholes but leaving other defects just metres away unrepaired, a cabinet member has said. And community leaders have previously called for workers to be allowed to use their common sense to fix more nearby potholes that have not been flagged up for action alongside those they have been sent out to repair.

Now Staffordshire County Council is looking to repair "places" as part of its road maintenance programme and fix 9,000 more potholes on top of the 35,000 tackled in a typical year. It is set to invest an extra £15.5m in the coming year on fixing roads as part of its spending plans.

On Wednesday cabinet members approved the 2022/23 highways and transport programme.

Councillor Mark Deaville said: "We all know that good-quality roads are vital to enable our communities and businesses to thrive. The quality of our roads also directly affects the quality of our lives.

"An important part of our corporate plan is to fix more roads and we need to improve and increase defect repairs. We know that improving highways is one of the top priorities for Staffordshire people and we want them to see an improvement in the condition of our highways over the next four years.

"This year we will be investing over £50m in a range of major projects and vital improvements to road maintenance. However, it's not all about money – we have a programme of working practice improvements.

"We have a programme about placing greater focus on customer quality and requirements. Our teams will now go out and not just repair a Category One or Category Two defect, they will go out and repair that area.

"A fairly common complaint we all have is that two potholes were repaired in a certain area, but another one just 20 yards down the road was left. So we're putting extra money into the capital pot to pay for this place improvement."

Fellow cabinet members welcomed the "right first time" approach to tackling road defects. Councillor Simon Tagg said: "As a resident of the county I'm really pleased with the extra investment we're putting into highways of £15.5m on key things that really affect our roads and residents' perceptions of the road.

"It's making sure we do all the potholes that are in an area and not just do one and leave three or four just as bad sitting there. It's really bad to see and our residents get annoyed.

"We're coming out of another winter period and it's been really bad on our roads. Salting roads makes them safe from ice but also that is also degrading our roads. That springtime purge of potholes, getting rid of the winter work stack, is really important."

Councillor Julia Jessel said: "The right first time principle is really welcome news. Instead of just going to deal with one pothole and leaving the others in the near vicinity, potholes will be dealt with.

"This is like manna from heaven I'm sure for every county councillor on this authority whose email inbox gets filled up with complaints about potholes. We should never forget the public are the people who pay for this and this is a demonstration we are putting our listening and learning into practice."

Councillor Deaville also paid tribute to the front line workers repairing the county's roads.

He said: "I pass on my thanks to the people who go out at midnight repairing the emergency potholes that I report in Winnothdale or Freehay or Cheadle. These people go out all weathers keeping us safe with the winter operations.

"I really think they have taken this common sense approach on board where we look at repairing an area, not a defect."