The new coalition government is now reconsidering all spending pledges made since January 1.
But local authority highways chiefs believe they won’t have to give the money back – because most of it has been spent already.
One highways boss told the Enquirer: “The brutal truth is that a lot of that £100m has been spent because we needed to move quickly because of the state of the roads after the severe winter.
“The £100m hardly made a dent on the maintenance backlog anyway because of the huge underfunding that our road network has suffered for years.”
Local authority transport departments are bracing themselves for a 25% funding cut which will spell the end of most new road building.
The source said: “We will protect maintenance because the roads are so bad but new routes will be few and far between.
“You can’t stop new building altogether because we need roads to service all the new housing that has been promised. You will find that developers will be funding more and more as the public well runs dry.”