Labour leader Keir Starmer is the new UK prime minister, with a huge majority and a mandate to deliver his promised ‘age of national renewal’ in which his government will ‘start to rebuild our country’.
With only a handful of seats left to declare, Mr Starmer's Labour had won at least 412 to secure a majority of at least 174 MPs. It is a historical achievement and his national renewal project is badly needed in many areas, including highways.
Safety first
The first priority is safety. Tens of thousands of people are killed and seriously injured every year on our roads. Not only is this literally a matter of life and death, but it is one of those rare political issues without a downside or trade-off to speak of - some specific measures might raise controversy but there are no anti-safety voters.
Road safety campaigners numbering more than 30 bodies came together to release a safety manifesto in a run-up to the general election.
Highways would highlight two of their unanimously agreed points. The manifesto called for a new National Road Safety Strategy ‘focused on prevention, protection, and post-collision response, coupled with evidence-based targets and robust safety performance indicators’.
Road safety targets were removed over a decade ago; since then there has been little to no change. The new government has a moral imperative to act and a chance to secure real progress for its name.
Highways would also support the call to establish a Road Safety Investigation Branch – an independent body modelled after existing transportation safety branches to analyse road incidents and provide actionable insights for preventing future tragedies. A lot of excellent work went into proving this concept.
A trial was launched in 2018 involving the RAC Foundation and three police forces, which saw dedicated teams carrying out in-depth research in selected cases.
The previous government approved the plans in principle but then ministers stalled on the delivery. The concept could prove indispensable to securing progress in road safety, in any number of ways from our understanding of design and speed management to our understanding of driver behaviour.
There can be no success in roads until we have made them safer, which is something the issues around smart motorways should have taught us.
Devolve, rebuild, renew
In terms of the general maintenance of our roads, the roads industry would of course love more money and desparately needs it, but asking for more cash is a long shot given the nation's finances.
In its manifesto, Labour promised £320m towards local road repairs ‘by deferring the A27 bypass, which is poor value for money’ in a bid to fill an extra million potholes in each year of the next parliament.
With this representing an extra £64m a year and the current cost of filling a pothole at £72.26, the sums don’t quite add up, leaving Labour short by around 111,000 potholes.
Regardless, the number comes nowhere near the figure needed. According to the 2024 ALARM survey, the annual ‘additional amount local authorities across England and Wales would have needed to maintain their network to their own targets was £1.22bn’, with the total repairs backlog at a record £16.3bn.
What the roads industry can realistically ask for is a five-year funding settlement for the local network to put its 98% of roads on the same footing as the remaining 2% in the strategic road network.
As John Werran of local think tank Localis highlights: 'As new Number 10 chief of staff Sue Gray assembles the centralised set of advisers gathering to deliver on the Labour government’s missions, the need to restore stability to local government finances and staunch the wounds to prevent a further cascade of section 114 notices will be high among her snag list of immediate inheritance problems.
'The [Labour] manifesto promised a much-desired multi-year financial settlement an end to the tournament bidding for local growth funds that bedevilled the levelling up years and served as an enemy of long-term prudential planning.'
This approach is generally agreed to be the right way forward for highways.
The country has to move beyond fixing potholes to preventing them from forming in the first place by improving the general structural integrity of the network. A multi-year funding settlement would allow councils to plan ahead and build the foundation needed to prevent the potholes from forming.
The Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) made a similar call in its own manifesto, which called on the new government to: ‘Commit to a local roads investment strategy and provide clear, long-term aims on how we will use the transport network and support this with long-term transport investments (at least 10–20 years).’
The 2024 ALARM survey told us: ‘Structural conditions continue to decline and now less than half (only 47%) of local road miles in England and Wales are classed as being in ‘good’ structural condition, down from 51% last year. The remaining 53% – more than 107,000 miles – now have less than 15 years’ structural life remaining.’
By the end of the five years of this Parliament will fewer roads be classified as being in poor condition? Or will we still be getting poor value for money, spending cash on pothole filling rather than making sure they didn’t form in the first place?
It is these figures, not the number of potholes or even the overall backlog, that ministers should and will be judged against.
Mr Werran also highlighted Labour's challenge 'to deliver on the very ambitious constitutional and economic reforms that would among other things, if enacted, see English mayoral combined authorities enjoy parity with the devolved governments in the Council of the Nations and Regions'.
As Labour sets about rebuilding the country, it has a big task ahead. The new Government would do well to rebuild from the ground up, to make sure our local foundations are right. This involves devolution and local flexibility of spending. It also hopefully will see councils not just rebuild our local services, but also our local places.
With better roads comes more civic pride and a better chance to get moving forward in the right direction.
