DfT attacked over road cash in new report

As part of the Government’s funding to maintain local roads, more than £1 billion a year is given to local authorities. However, an inquiry by MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) found that the DfT does not know how the cash is spent as it is not ring-fenced, nor what it wants to achieve with it.

Government data presented to the inquiry showed the condition of local roads as stable – despite industry estimates showing that the condition of local roads is worsening, as public satisfaction falls and pothole-related incidents rise. With information only collected on unclassified roads on a voluntary basis from local authorities, the DfT admitted to MPs that its data was not good enough.

Committee chair, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, said: “The declining state of England’s local roads is a national embarrassment. As well as harming the prospects for our economy and communities’ own social wellbeing, highways riddled with potholes pose an increasing safety threat to road users.

“Alarmingly, however, not only is the state of our local roads on the downslope, our inquiry shows Government are having to find out about these issues from industry bodies and road users themselves due to their own patchy data.”

The committee’s report – ‘Condition and maintenance of Local Roads in England’ – also criticises the short-term approach of central Government funding for local authorities to repair local roads, which the DfT admitted to the inquiry was not best value for money. Providing only annual funding is likely to have pushed councils to focus more on reactive repair work, rather than preventing problems occurring in the first place.

The report calls on Government to simplify its funding to local authorities, currently given through 12 different funding pots, and to provide longer-term certainty on the amount and duration of funding.

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