The latest Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey shows a dire state for road users
The carriageway repair backlog in the 2025 ALARM survey is approaching £17bn, the highest figure yet.
The survey also shows that a road is resurfaced once, on average, every 93 years.
The ALARM survey is commissioned by the Asphalt Industry Alliance
The survey looks at local authority highway departments in England and Wales, and the details of the funding and conditions of the local road network for each authority. The information is drawn from those responsible for local road maintenance. The survey accounts for 203,809 miles of roads, over 97% of the total network.
In the 2025 edition, a record high of 78% of local authorities responded.
The total road network is valued at £400bn, however, only 1% of this value is spent annually on road maintenance.
The average highway maintenance budget for each authority sat at £26m, showing a real-terms cut of 4.1%. 53% of total maintenance budgets were spent on carriageway repairs, up by 1% from the previous year. 89% of respondent authorities spent their entire carriageway budget, and 23% of authorities overspent, due to rising costs and project overruns.
The local road repair backlog is at its highest yet
The ALARM survey has been running for 30 years, with this edition marking the highest ‘one-time’ cost of repair work yet at £16.81bn. This would mean an average of 12 years to clear, and is up by 42% from 2016.
12% (around 24,500 miles) of roads are in RED condition, being defined as being in such poor condition that they require urgent attention within a year. Just half of local roads are rated as GREEN, or in good condition, at 56%.
In the last 12 month period, £137.4m has been spent on pothole repairs, down by 4.3% from the previous period and representing 1.9m potholes being filled. This number contributes to £1.08bn.
The increasing backlog and decreasing average work taken on roads has been attributed three key factors, primarily unforeseen costs (due to storms, weather, traffic, and other unforeseen circumstances) causing £127.3m in unexpected repairs and diverting time from the backlog, and utility company’s opening roads causing more rapid deterioration. Utility company’s opened 2.2m roads in the last year, causing £66.8m in repairs as every opening decreases road life by an estimated 17%.
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.
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