Road Maintenance Funding: Nottinghamshire

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Tuesday 16th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Simon Lightwood)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) for securing this important debate. He spoke with real passion about the state of roads in Nottinghamshire, and rightly so, because this is not an abstract issue. It is about the roads that people rely on every day to get to work, to take their children to school, to support local businesses and, above all, to travel safely. For too long for people across Nottinghamshire, those everyday journeys have been made harder by roads that simply have not been good enough or safe enough.

My hon. Friend highlighted that this has not happened by accident. It is the product of years—indeed, over a decade—of under-investment in our local road network: potholes left unrepaired, surfaces deteriorating, preventive maintenance deferred again and again. We are now dealing with the consequences of those decisions. This Government are determined to turn that around. That is why we are providing a record £7.3 billion for highway maintenance over the next four years, giving councils the long-term certainty that they need to plan properly to resurface our roads and tackle the pothole plague once and for all.

Crucially, we are also backing the east midlands by providing £2 billion in transport for city regions funding through to 2031-32. Delivered through the East Midlands combined county authority under the leadership of Mayor Claire Ward, this substantial investment, devolved to the region, will enable transformational investment in local transport infrastructure, including roads, and empower local leaders to make decisions that reflect real local priorities, because we know that better decisions are made closer to the communities they serve. However, funding alone is not enough. It must be matched by delivery. That is why we have introduced a strengthened system of accountability, built on transparency, clear performance ratings and incentives for local highway authorities.

First, transparency. Councils now have to publish clear annual reports showing the condition of their roads, what they are doing to maintain them and how public money is being spent. That includes not just how many potholes they have fixed, but how they fixed them, whether repairs are built to last and whether they are investing in prevention, such as maintaining drainage and using surface treatments to stop potholes forming in the first place. My hon. Friend mentioned his constituent who had simply given up reporting a pothole on her street. It may be useful to point out that councils will now have to publish how residents can report road defects, how that information is used to prioritise repairs and whether people are kept informed once a problem has been raised. Transparency really matters. It gives residents a clear view of how their roads are managed, makes councils accountable for their choices and helps to ensure that funding is used to deliver long-term improvements, not just short-term fixes.

Secondly, ratings bring that information together into a clear, accessible judgment of performance so that residents can easily see how well their council is maintaining the roads they rely on. In the most recent assessment, Nottinghamshire was rated green for highways maintenance spend, but amber for the condition of its roads and adherence to best practice, resulting in an overall amber rating. That tells us two things: funding is reaching the right places because the council is spending the money allocated to it, but there is still work to do on improving road conditions and embedding best practice.

Thirdly, incentives. A share of the funding is now linked to clear performance requirements that every authority is expected to meet. That includes spending all the Government’s highways funding on maintenance rather than devoting it elsewhere. It also requires authorities to maintain up-to-date asset management plans, which ensure that maintenance decisions are based on evidence and long-term outcomes rather than simply react to potholes once they appear.

Alongside that, we are supporting authorities to improve through highways innovation programmes such as Live Labs 2, targeted support for red-rated authorities and updating the code of practice for well-maintained highways. We are helping councils to adopt new approaches, build capacity and deliver better outcomes for residents. Earlier this year, we published the first national road safety strategy in over a decade, setting out how we will cut road deaths and serious injuries on Britain’s roads by 65% by 2035.

Let me be clear that this Government are stepping up. We are providing the funding, we are putting in place the performance framework, and we are backing regions such as the east midlands to succeed. On a national scale, we are already beginning to see the impact of that approach. In 2025, after nearly a decade-long decline, the percentage of roads receiving maintenance treatment went up again, but it is for local highway authorities, in this case Nottinghamshire county council, to get on and deliver. That means more than just filling potholes when they appear; it means investing in long-term preventive maintenance, making smarter use of materials and technology, and building a road network that is safer, smoother and more reliable for the future. Recent figures show that, while overall road fatalities have declined, far too many people are still killed or seriously injured on our roads each year. Every pothole that is left unrepaired and every surface that is allowed to deteriorate is a risk that we must take seriously.

I finish by returning to the central point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield: the people of Nottinghamshire deserve roads that are properly maintained. This Government are delivering the investment needed to make that happen, and we are putting in place clear expectations and accountability to ensure results. It is now for Nottinghamshire county council to turn that investment into results on the ground.

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate, and I look forward to continuing to work across the House, and with Mayor Claire Ward and local partners, to ensure that the people of Nottinghamshire see the improvements that they have every right to expect.

Question put and agreed to.