A new survey has found that 85% of county councils plan to reduce roads maintenance next year due to rising costs, whilst scrapping or reviewing major highways projects.
The County Councils Network (CCN) said it is calling on the chancellor to intervene at the March Budget and provide £500m of new capital funding.
Recent reports from the Daily Mail suggest around £200m could be made available in the Budget.
The CCN said its research shows that inflation is set add at least £514m to roads and infrastructure ‘budgets’ in county areas this year and next, with councils saying construction and contractor costs have risen by up to 25% on average for highways projects.
This comprises £404m of capital (roads only) ‘inflationary pressures’ and £110m of highways maintenance ‘revenue pressures’ over the two years.
The CCN said the 36 councils in county areas this year plan to spend on average just £26,000 per mile on road repairs, pothole filling, and constructing new junctions and networks, while councils in London plan to spend £67,000 per mile, urban metropolitan councils £50,000, and local authorities in England’s eight ‘core cities’ £66,000 per mile.
It said that despite a pledge in the Conservative Manifesto to invest an additional £500m in road improvements in each year of this Parliament, councils’ capital funding has been £400m lower in each of the last two years compared to 2021.
The CCN has previously said that central government capital funding for road maintenance fell by around £300m between 2020-21 and 2021-22 and spending has been frozen at 2021-22 levels for this year and the remaining two years of the parliament.
However, central government funding for major road projects has also dropped off, despite the Government creating a National Roads Fund to spend a proportion of Vehicle Excise Duty on local authority road schemes.
The CCN said that schemes reviewed or reconsidered over the last few months in county areas include:
- Parts of the £67m North Devon Link Road have not been taken forward due to contractor costs rising by 25% since the project was approved in 2019. Parts of the scheme not being taken forward include improvement works at six junctions, a mile-long overtaking lane, as well as a footbridge.
- Proposals for a new bypass on the A39 between the M5 and Clarks Village and Somerset have been cut by the Department for Transport. The project, which would have taken 95% of traffic away from two Somerset towns (Ashcott and Walton) was given ‘in principle’ approval in 2020.
- The £78m A30 to St Austell Link Road in Cornwall has seen its cost increase beyond the available budget and the funding award was ‘capped’ to the value set on the outline business case several years earlier. The council has had to remove some elements of the scheme, including traffic calming in nearby villages, but is committed to renewing these if fresh funding becomes available.
- Cheshire East Council has been 'forced' to pause development work on the proposed Congleton Greenway Project, which would have provided cycle and walking connectivity from new housing developments after costs escalated from £1.8m when the scheme was approved to almost £5m today.
Cllr Tim Oliver, Chairman of the CCN and leader of Surrey County Council, said: ‘We know that the state of roads and congestion are two of the biggest issues for local residents, which is why councils in county areas have put forward ambitious highways resurfacing and major improvement works, but we are in a very different reality to when many of those plans were signed off.
‘With inflation running at over 9% for close to a year, the sums committed for these projects no longer stretch as far as they could, leading to difficult decisions on road improvements.’
This week, ministers re-announced £49.5m for the North and East Melton Mowbray distributor road (pictured), whose cost has doubled from £63.5m to £127m.
This level of government funding for the project was first announced in 2018 as a Large Local Major. At the end of last year, Leicestershire County Council decided to increase its contribution to £51m towards the scheme.
While the project illustrates the slow drip of government cash for major local authority schemes, ministers’ decision not to fund the A39 scheme shows that such funding is never confirmed until a lengthy approval process has been navigated.
Roads minister Richard Holden said: ‘For too many years, Melton has been plagued by disruptive and polluting traffic congestion which has made it difficult to reach its historic town centre, grow our economy, and savour its delicious pork pies and Stilton cheese.’
