The Department for Transport (DfT) has suggested that maintenance and renewals will be a ‘growing and essential element’ of the 2025-30 Road Investment Strategy (RIS).
The comments were made by the department in response to a Transport Select Committee report, which had argued that renewal and maintenance money should be prioritised in the next RIS, ‘rather than costly enhancements that have been prone to delay and overspend’.
The DfT said it agreed ‘in principle’ with this point, but stressed that almost half of funding for the current strategy (RIS 2) was budgeted for maintenance work.
‘Maintenance and renewals to keep the network in a safe and serviceable condition and minimise the need for more structural, intrusive repairs, are likely to be a growing and essential element of the roads programme,' department officials said in their response.
They added: 'The Government is currently developing its investment priorities for RIS3 (2025-30). More details will be set out in the draft RIS3 later in 2023.’
The committee has published the Department’s official response to its report on Strategic Road Investment, ‘an inquiry prompted by persistent delays and overspends on a catalogue of large-scale schemes’.
Maintenance works on an M25 viaduct near Watford last year
The committee said it had heard concerns that the switch to electric vehicles may not happen quickly enough to offset the carbon emissions from increased traffic on the SRN and urged DfT to consider actions and model scenarios that could reduce or limit such increases.
Ministers rejected this point and said the Government’s role is ‘not to stop people travelling'.
The DfT also rejected calls for a ‘live’ project dashboard to provide up-to-date information on all projects in the RIS portfolios, including their costs, planning status and expected completion dates.
It promised instead to work closely with National Highways and the Office of Rail and Road, ‘to explore the opportunity for more frequent public project reporting in one place’.
