Council engineers brace themselves for rough financial ride

03 October 2007

The Department for Transport has kicked a debate on the funding needed to clear the road repairs backlog into the long grass, as engineers braced themselves for a disappointing spending review.

On the eve of the Comprehensive Spending Review which will decide revenue allocations for maintenance for up to 2011, engineers also accused the DfT of downplaying evidence that many local roads were still deteriorating.

According to the National Road Maintenance Condition Survey, non built-up roads significantly worsened last year, and unclassified country roads were still in a worse state than in 1977, the baseline year. But the DfT spokesman was ‘pleased’ with the results, stressing that ‘it cannot be assumed roads were maintained in the most appropriate way in 1977’.

And when asked whether it was still committed to identifying the size of the national repair backlog – and to securing the funding from the Treasury to clear it – the DfT merely promised future discussions.

The DfT pledged ‘an informed debate about how central government can assist local government to deliver’ only once all authorities had asset management plans, setting out their desired service levels for different roads.

Lester Willmington, chair of the County Surveyors’ Society (CSS) highways management committee, said: ‘The condition survey was designed to track condition over time. It’s irrelevant what roads were like in 1977.'

Without any compulsion on highway authorities to draw up an asset-management plan, it was not known when there would be a national picture of the backlog and cost of clearing it. ‘How can an authority be expected to remove the backlog?’

Richard Wills, CSS president, said more sophisticated assessments of condition and costed programmes of treatment for bringing each category of roads up to a certain desired standard would ‘probably frighten politicians’. It would be ‘far more difficult to hide the stark truth about the backlog of expenditure’.

Cash-strapped councils had to prioritise, leaving country roads neglected. ‘Our concern is that one day, some of these roads may become unsafe or unusable.’ His county of Lincolnshire’s work on an aborted private-finance initiative bid ‘clearly indicated the need for considerably greater expenditure, and that this investment would be excellent value-for-money’.

But Matthew Lugg, CSS engineering committee chair, acknowledged that ‘we’ve missed the boat in this spending review’ by not having got a handle on the size of the backlog in England. While it was clear that the DfT’s target to clear the backlog by 2011 had been abandoned, he welcomed the prospect of a debate on what represented sustainable, value-for-money investment.

For more, see the QnA with the Department for Transport

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Council engineers brace themselves for rough financial ride

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