On 17 January – two days after National Pothole Day – the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) published the findings into its inquiry into local road conditions and maintenance. The role of the PAC, which is made up of MPs from all parties, is to examine whether the Government is getting good value for money with the public money it spends.
The PAC’s verdict is that the Department of Transport (DfT) does not have a good grasp on the condition of local roads, it doesn’t allocate funding according to need and the way that it allocated funding is pushing local authorities into reactive works – rather than allowing them to carry out preventative maintenance which would cost less in the long term.
On publication of the report, the chair of the committee, Conservative MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown said: “The declining state of England’s local roads is a national embarrassment. As well as harming the prospects for our economy and communities’ own social wellbeing, highways riddled with potholes pose an increasing safety threat to road users.”
The report points out that the DfT provides funding through 12 different pots, which have different eligibility criteria: eight are based on network length, three require local authorities to bid and one is an incentive fund. It also criticised the DfT for not having updated guidance on good practice for road maintenance or its highways maintenance appraisal tool for several years.
These, and other issues highlighted in the report, should not be news to Future of Roads Minister Lilian Greenwood who popped up on National Pothole Day to point out that the Government was investing £1.6bn to fix potholes in England in the next financial year. Greenwood was chair of the House of Commons Transport Committee in 2019 when it published a report called Local roads funding maintenance: filling the gap which highlighted some of the same issues that the PAC report raises.
Making progress
One of the issues raised in that 2019 Transport Committee report was the need for more innovation, and the need to share innovation and best practice between local authorities. It is fair to say that progress is being made here, through the work of the Local Councils Roads Innovation Group (LCRIG), with its growing membership, and through the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport’s (ADEPT’s) Live Labs programmes.
Better data is on the horizon too. The DfT’s new standard on data collection, PAS 2161, should allow more informed decisions on funding. Currently voluntary while councils and technology suppliers work out how best to meet it, the standard will be mandatory from April 2026. However, as the PAC report points out, there will still be no prescribed way for collecting information on walkways, cycle paths and bridges.
More data and more innovation cannot make up for our very own ‘black hole’ of missing road maintenance funding. The Asphalt Industry Alliance has estimated that £16.3bn would be required just to fix potholes and get roads back to a reasonable standard. And that is just the start.
According to Mr Pothole, Mark Morrell, the former mayor of Brackley - who has spent the last decade campaigning to improve the UK’s roads – the total cost of backlog repairs when bridges, footpaths and drainage are taken into account would be closer to £30bn. Sadly, Mr Pothole retired last week, due to his wife’s ill health, winning the title of Highways Hero from Highways magazine in recognition of his work and achievements.
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