Reactions to the annual spotlight cast on highway authorities’ maintenance spend patterns ranged from resignation to outrage at what they saw as a false comparison or erroneous figures.
While some of the councils acknowledged that they knowingly under-spent their revenue maintenance allocations, others pointed out that the Department for Transport figures did not compare like with like.
One authority, Bristol, which underspent the biggest percentage of its combined capital and revenue allocation nationally, according to the data – by 46% – rejected the capital figures as ‘wildly inaccurate’. It insisted its capital underspend was 3.5% rather than the 79% quoted.
On revenue, it had ‘exercised its right to commit the money to improving the network, as well as repairing the roads’.
North Tyneside said it had slightly overspent compared with its £1.9M revenue allocation, not overspent by £2.2M, and overspent overall. ‘It could be that the allocation figures refer to a heading that covers more than highways maintenance’ – a point also made by Sheffield council, which claimed that if its FSS outturn included the same things as the FSS allocation its £9.97M ‘underspend’ would be reduced by around £3M.
Nottingham City Council said the claim it had underspent its total allocation by £5.3M ignored £300,000 reallocated from the integrated transport block, highways improvements undertaken as part of major schemes, and over-programming in previous years.
But the department stood by its figures, which on the revenue side had deliberately excluded road construction or improvement – although it admitted the ‘fine line’ between improvement and maintenance work.
Other councils named as big underspenders including Coventry, Telford and South Gloucestershire claimed the total revenue allocations were inadequate, and they had other priorities.
But Northamptonshire the biggest ‘underspender’ in absolute terms – £12.3M – pledged to return revenue spending to FSS levels within four years following a change in control to Conservative.
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