The Department for Transport's (DfT) guidance on the new regime for local authority road condition surveys is delayed until next summer at the earliest, a DfT official has said.
The three-month delay is a result of a trial being carried out at a county council, the DfT’s head of road network statistics, Laura Murphy, told an audience of local authority highway officials.
The department announced in 2021 that it would allow local highway authorities to choose their own surveying technology for road condition monitoring and introduce a new data standard.
Local highway authorities are required to submit road condition data annually to the DfT, which currently prescribes that it be collected using Surface Condition Assessment for the National Network of Roads (SCANNER) survey vehicles (pictured).
However, the DfT has said that this provides barriers to new suppliers in the sector, which discourages innovation. In future, highway authorities will be able to use any accredited technology that conforms to the standard.
Ms Murphy said the DfT did not intend to abandon SCANNER but open up the market.
The new regime will also change how authorities report road condition. Where they currently report the percentage of roads that should be considered for maintenance (red), with some also choosing to report amber and green categories, in future, authorities will report their percentages of roads in five categories.
It was initially thought that a new regime could be brought in for the current financial year but the most recent timetable would have seen new DfT guidance published by April next year with the new regime fully adopted from April 2026
Ms Murphy said the guidance would now be issued around July 2024, which the DfT believes is a realistic publication date.
A survey van operated by Gaist, one of the (relatively) new market entrants
The news follows the decision to undertake a road trial in conjunction with Surrey County Council and TRL, which the DfT decided was ‘vital research to make a standard that has value and is widely used by stakeholders’.
The trial will use parts of the Surrey road network to trial different technologies against the new standard. The transport research body has been working with the council to design a varied sample of roads to survey.
Authorities will collect data in line with current requirements during the current financial year but from April 2024 to March 2026 the DfT will begin operating a ‘dual run’, which will allow suppliers and asset management software developers time to prepare for the switch and allow the department to begin to assess the impact of the standard on the data.
Under the dual run, the DfT will still send out the annual survey with the option to provide data under the current SCANNER red, amber green standard and/or based on the new categorisation.
Ms Murphy stressed that this will not require multiple surveys or additional costs to authorities but will instead be for suppliers to present data in the old and new ways.
