Maintenance budget gets boost with £289M

28 November 2007

The Government has injected £289M more in capital funding for highways maintenance up to 2010/11 than previously announced, but provided the funds as supported borrowing.

The funding hike, from the £2bn in ‘indicative allocations’ previously announced, takes the total capital funding to be distributed to local highway authorities to £2.3bn. Of this, £130M of the extra funds has been placed into the general pot, allowing, above-inflation hikes from 2009/10, of 6%, then, in 2010/11, 10%.

The move follows protests from 11 councils standing to receive up to 12% less next year than in 2007/08, and Surveyor’s ‘Beat the Backlog’ campaign, which highlighted the need for real-terms funding increases.

Changes to the formula for distributing funds saw many sparsely-populated counties with unclassified roads in a poor condition facing multimillion-pound cuts. Ministers’ approval of the extra £130M has reduced the size of the reductions in these authorities’ budgets, without taking the money from other councils.

Cumbria County Council, which was facing a £1.4M cut, instead got £200,000 extra; Norfolk, which stood to lose £2.2M, got £1.5M less; Shropshire suffered a £1M reduction, rather than £1.5M, as proposed. This followed the department’s decision to introduce a damping mechanism to limit changes to 10%, to avoid big swings.

The increases for the biggest winners, however – Wigan and Thurrock councils, which benefited most in percentage terms from the overhauling of the formula – were left intact. The rest of the increase over three years – £113M – has been top-sliced for bids for exceptional maintenance and bridge strengthening – less than the £50M provided for such projects annually since 2006. A further £30M of the extra cash yet to be allocated ‘may be used to encourage better transport asset-management planning, vital to ensuring efficiency gains are realised’.

The remaining £16M goes to exceptional maintenance schemes, which will, in future, have to compete with other schemes in the regional funding allocation process. Winterton, who also confirmed that £1.8bn would be provided up to 2010/11 for integrated transport projects, said local transport authorities ‘can be proud’ of their record on providing safer environments and improved roads.

Matthew Lugg, chair of the County Surveyors’ Society engineering committee, said: ‘The department has listened after the big swings in last year’s settlement. ‘But, because the funds were provided as supported borrowing, ‘some authorities may not be able to capitalise on the allocations because they can’t afford the borrowing.’

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