English authorities cut spending on road maintenance... again

22 May 2008
 
Local highway authorities in England reduced their revenue spending on road maintenance for the second year running, according to the Government.

The Department for Transport’s latest annual report says outturn revenue spending on highway maintenance fell for the second year running in 2006/07. It was £2.3bn in 2004/05, when councils had topped up the Government’s £2bn allocation with £343M extra.

But this had slipped to £2.1bn in 2005/06 – roughly the amount earmarked by the Government – and in the last financial year, only £1.9bn was spent on maintenance.

County Surveyors’ Society engineering chair, Matthew Lugg, said that less was being spent because the Government had provided less money, while demands for funding from the grant were rising.

Gordon Brown, when he was chancellor, froze revenue allocations for highway maintenance at £2.1bn from 2005/06 until 2007/08, at a time that the Local Government Association warned adult social care and waste costs were rising.

Mr Lugg told Surveyor: ‘We need ongoing investment, but we’re going backwards. The gains made after this government increased highways funding in the year 2000 stand to be lost. ‘And removing national indicators for unclassified roads, a very big proportion of local networks, has removed the incentive for council leaders to prioritise roads. Does the Government not want it to be reported that conditions are deteriorating?’

It was ‘concerning’ that the national road maintenance condition survey had not yet been published. In the last five years, it was published in April or early May. The DfT said it would be published next month.

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