Parliament’s spending watchdog has slammed the Department for Transport (DfT) for a lack of knowledge on the condition of the English local road network and what local authority funding is achieving.
The National Audit Office (NAO) report The condition and maintenance of local roads in England examines whether the DfT is ensuring value for money from its funding and whether it is effectively supporting councils to deliver local road maintenance.
The NAO pointed out that while the limited data DfT collects suggests the surface condition of local roads has been stable over time, information from industry bodies and people using roads suggests that road condition is getting worse.
The DfT’s latest data on road surface condition shows that around two-thirds (67% in 2022-23) of the total local road network length was in good condition but the Asphalt Industry Alliance’s ALARM survey shows only half of roads (48% in 2023-24) to be in good structural condition, which has been largely consistent since 2015-16.
In addition, research undertaken in 2021 by the UK Roads Leadership Group found the condition of the network was deteriorating.
The report noted that unlike funding for the strategic road network, the DfT’s funding for local roads has generally been short-term and provided through multiple funds.
In the past decade, funding for local roads has been provided through 12 different funds.
And although spending review settlements include multi-year annual totals for local road maintenance, the DfT has only provided certainty over total funding to local authorities on an annual basis, with the exception of City Region Transport Settlements (CRSTS).
The report says: ‘Annual allocations through multiple funds reduce the certainty of funding for local authorities, inhibiting their ability to develop longer-term, more cost-effective maintenance regimes.’
The NAO also found the DfT’s use of funding incentives to improve local authorities’ approach to asset management no longer works as intended and that the increasing backlog in road maintenance work hinders local authorities in undertaking preventative work that could deliver better value.
In relation to the DfT's pledge of £8.3bn additional ‘Network North’ funding, the report notes that the department has indicated to local authorities the total additional funding they can expect to receive by 2034, but not how this will be profiled across each year.
It adds that it is also not clear how this will interact with baseline funding for local road maintenance from 2025-26 onwards.
It states: ‘The long-term nature of this new funding has potential to provide greater funding stability and certainty to local authorities, although the level of any capital funding for local road maintenance that DfT may provide alongside Network North funding is unknown beyond 2025.’
The report adds: ‘In our view, the new funding provides an opportunity for DfT to change and experiment with how it allocates funding to local authorities, using data to identify areas of greatest need or where the value of investment could be maximised to inform allocations.’
On the issue of guidance, the report notes that the DfT provided £6m for the Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme but did not fund the programme after 2016-17, adding: ‘While there was evidence that this programme was helping local authorities achieve efficiencies in maintenance delivery, learning from it has not been shared.’
Among a raft of recommendations, the NAO said the DfT should review its coverage requirements for local authorities on surface condition reporting, making use of the advances in data collection and technology, and request information on the condition of other key road network assets.
The DfT was also told to review its approach to allocating capital funding to ensure its effectiveness and work with the Treasury to set out how it will give local authorities longer-term funding certainty.
The NAO also recommended that the DfT review tools and guidance provided to local authorities and set out how and when it will refresh them as well as identifying and filling gaps in guidance.
A DfT spokesperson said: 'We are absolutely committed to tackling the poor state of our roads. That’s why we’ve pledged to support local authorities to fix local pothole-ridden roads for the long term.'
AA president Edmund King called the report ‘a damning indictment of the state of UK local roads and their upkeep’, adding that the new government ‘has an opportunity to implement longer term funding and stricter controls and guidance to bring about more innovation leading to permanent repairs rather than the current patchwork approach’.
The RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, said: ‘This is sadly yet more damning evidence that England’s local roads are in a truly dire state of repair.
‘It’s bad enough that historically the Government doesn’t really know just how bad our roads are. But it’s absolutely staggering that it doesn’t know whether the money it gives to councils has been used effectively.
‘This has to change and we very much hope the new government acts fast to fix it.’
