Asked by: Lord Mawson (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the age distribution of potholes in England; and what tools exist for determining how long specific potholes have been left unrepaired.
Answered by Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill - Minister of State (Department for Transport)
Local highway authorities have a duty under Section 41 of the Highways Act 1980 to maintain the highways network in their area. The Act does not set out specific standards of maintenance, as it is for each individual local highway authority to assess which parts of its network need repair and what standards should be applied, based upon their local knowledge and circumstances.
The Department does not hold data on the time taken by local highway authorities to repair reported potholes, but national guidance recommends that defects and potholes which require urgent attention should be made safe at the time of inspection or as soon as possible.
Local highway authorities have a wide range of tools and methods available to them to survey their networks and to monitor the condition of the roads they maintain over time. The Government does not prescribe which of these must be used to inform their asset management programme.
Asked by: Lord Mawson (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what penalties exist for local highway authorities which do not spend the portion of funding allocated to them to address potholes on road repairs.
Answered by Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill - Minister of State (Department for Transport)
The Government recognises that historic underinvestment has meant that authorities have not necessarily had the resources to maintain roads in the way that they would want to. The Government has therefore announced a record £7.3 billion for the next four years. This is building on the c.£1.6 billion in capital funding for local highways maintenance in England for the financial year 2025/26, which includes £500 million of additional funding when compared to funding levels for 2024/25.
In 2025/26, 25% of the additional funding was designated as incentive funding and was contingent upon local highway authorities meeting certain reporting requirements. A portion of the £7.3 billion over the next four years will also be designated as incentive funding and will be subject to local highway authorities demonstrating that they comply with best practice in highways maintenance, for example by spending all the DfT’s capital grant on highways maintenance and adopting more preventative maintenance. Authorities that fail to meet these standards will have this incentive funding withheld.
In addition, on 11 January, DfT published a new traffic light rating system for all local highway authorities in England. Under this system, each authority is rated red, amber or green based on the condition of their roads, how effectively they spend their record Government funding, and whether they do so using best practice. Authorities that state their capital investment to maintain local highways is less than DfT’s capital grant for highways maintenance receive a red spend scorecard under this rating system.
Asked by: Lord Mawson (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the current rate of improvement in road repairs across England; what metrics they use to undertake such an assessment; and what period such an assessment covers.
Answered by Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill - Minister of State (Department for Transport)
DfT collects and collates a range of information about information about local roads from local authorities in England annually.
Official statistics on the condition of local roads in England are published annually on GOV.uk. These statistics have presented the percentage of road that should have been considered for maintenance (red), by road classification and local authority, since 2008. These statistics show that in England:
This financial year the Government has introduced transparency reporting for local highway authorities across England alongside making an additional £500 million available for highways maintenance. To qualify for their full share of this funding uplift, local highway authorities had to publish reports setting out how they comply with best practice, including in relation to the extent to which they prioritise preventative maintenance.
Further to this, on 11 January, the Department published a new rating system for every highway authority in England. Each local highway authority received a red, amber or green rating based on the condition of their roads, how much they are spending to maintain it, and whether they do so using best practice, including by adopting more preventative maintenance. The ratings, which will be updated periodically, provide an incentive for councils to adopt more preventative maintenance, and enable the Department to provide targeted support to authorities to help them adopt best practice.
To gain access to their full highways maintenance funding in the future, local highway authorities will have to continue to demonstrate that they comply with best practice, for example by adopting more preventative maintenance.
Asked by: Lord Mawson (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what percentage of funding originally allocated to road repairs in England has subsequently been diverted to other, unrelated, programmes in the most recent two years for which figures are available.
Answered by Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill - Minister of State (Department for Transport)
From 2025, all local highway authorities were required to publish transparency reports on their websites to increase transparency and ensure that both Government and local residents can see how record investment into local roads is being spent. Using the data from these transparency reports, the Department published a new traffic light rating system for all local highway authorities in England on 11 January. Under this system, each authority is rated red, amber or green based on the condition of their roads, how effectively they spend their record Government funding, and whether they do so using best practice. This system provides public accountability and reinforces the expectation that funding is used for its intended purpose.
Under this system, 10 local highway authorities scored a red on their spend scorecard, which means they have stated in their highways maintenance transparency reports that in the current financial year they are due to invest less capital to maintain their local highways than their DfT capital grant for local highways maintenance. A large portion of local highway authorities did, however, spend more than their allocation with 113 local highway authorities receiving a green rating for this scorecard.