Money has been put aside for every region in England to tackle at least some of the UK’s road repair backlog
Many potholes are set to be fixed and prevented as the budget for UK road repair is set to be doubled by 2029.
Councils will need to show proof of spending on pothole repairs, as laid out in an announcement in March, in order to receive £500m or more per year for further road repair.
A total of £7.3bn for UK road repair
Originally, the share of UK road repair funding tied to transparency was 8%, but that is now being raised to 30%, worth more than £500m. Councils will receive this in addition to the core funding when they publish their transparency reports.
Otherwise, £7.3bn is being spread across councils in nine regions of England, including:
- North West: £800m
- Yorkshire and the Humber: £500m
- East Midlands: £700m
- West Midlands: £800m
- East of England: £1.2bn
- South East: £1.5bn
- South West: £1.5bn
- London: £300m
- North East: £30m
This money is in addition to a previously announced investment of £1.6bn.
Chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, said: “We promised to fix an extra million potholes a year by the end of this Parliament – we’re doing exactly that.
“We are doubling the funding promised by the previous government, making sure well maintained roads keep businesses moving, communities connected and growth reaching every part of the country.”
Transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, said: “We’re delivering the biggest-ever investment in road maintenance to fix Britain’s broken roads.
“We’re putting our money where our mouth is, giving councils the long-term investment they need to plan properly and get things right first time, saving you money on costly repairs and making a visible difference in our communities.
“This isn’t patchwork politics, we are starting the hard work of fixing Britain’s roads for good.”
The UK has a massive road repair backlog
In March, the Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance survey revealed the dire state of local roads in the UK, finding that the repair backlog is valued at £16.81bn, the highest it has ever been.
This means that a road in the UK is resurfaced, on average, once every 93 years.
Part of the issue is allocation of funding, as of the total £400bn value of the road network, just 1% of this is spent on road maintenance per year.
If the £16.81bn were spent as a one time cost, the work to clear all the required road repairs in the UK would take at least 12 years.
In July last year, the National Audit Office published a report on the state of England’s roads using data from local authorities to critique whether the Department for Transport (DfT) is performing adequately in maintenance.
The report found that 48% of local roads are in ‘good’ condition, 35% are in ‘adequate’ condition, and 17% are in ‘poor’ condition. The report determined that the DfT is uninformed about the state of England’s roads, with a discrepancy of nearly £4bn between the DfT’s and the Asphalt Industry Alliance’s repair cost estimates for 2023.
The post Autumn Budget allocating £7.3bn to UK road repair appeared first on Planning, Building & Construction Today.
