A major council insurer has called for increased funding for local authority road maintenance and more flexibility when spending it.
Ahead of the Spending Review, Zurich Municipal said that the government pledge of £1.6bn in 2025-26 to tackle ‘the pothole plague’ won't begin to put a dent in the backlog of potholes that has impacted the nation, with an estimated £16bn required in order to repair local roads.
The insurer said it is calling for the Government to increase funding to local authorities to improve the local road network, as well as giving them the flexibility to use the budget to prioritise repairs where they are needed most and improve road safety.
Alix Bedford, risk expert at Zurich Municipal, said: ‘We’ve had a particularly wet start to the year, which is only going to exacerbate the pothole problem that is plaguing the nation.
‘While the additional funding that government pledged at the end of last year is a step in the right direction, councils need a lot more funding so that they are not just repairing the current cavities in the roads to make them safer for all users, but also investing in the network so it doesn’t deteriorate in the first place.’
The Autumn Budget announced £1.6bn in capital funding for local highways maintenance in England for the financial year 2025-26, said to represent a one-off increase of £500m.
However, the Department for Transport said it will introduce a new incentive element ‘to ensure that best practice in sustainable highways asset management is followed’, with 25% of the funding uplift held back until local authorities can prove that they are meeting certain criteria, ‘further details of which will be shared with local authorities in due course’.
