Helen Morgan
Main Page: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)Department Debates - View all Helen Morgan's debates with the HM Treasury
(1 day, 7 hours ago)
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Stuart Anderson
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that excellent point. We have to look at rural counties, which are not being given the fair consideration that they need. The Government are currently holding back almost £46 million, I believe, from Lib Dem-run Shropshire council, because it has not met their stringent criteria. The council has an amber rating at the moment, and we are not getting the money that we need. Long-term certainty is required to ensure a more proactive approach to road measures, rather than just short-term solutions.
A report published just today by the Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance survey states that the backlog of repairs in England and Wales is worth more than £18 billion. The Government need to provide longer-term highways maintenance funding for councils through to 2032, as the previous Government planned to do. That would provide councils with the certainty they need to effectively plan and undertake repairs to roads. The decisions made by this Labour Government have taken millions of pounds out of South Shropshire.
The second issue is that the Lib Dem-run council now fixes only about half the potholes that were fixed previously. As per its press release last week, the figure was 25,000 over the last year, but if we go back one, two or three years, then we were averaging 38,000 to 41,000.
Helen Morgan
The hon. Member is making what is generally a good speech about rural funding, so it is a shame that he has made it party political. Does he not understand that the Conservative administration, under whose budget we are still operating, cut highways funding, including the proportion for preventive maintenance, for every year from 2022 to 2025? That will clearly have had a knock-on impact. If we do not maintain the roads, they will be in a much worse state at the end of that period.
Stuart Anderson
The hon. Member raises an important point—which I thought she might raise when I mentioned the local Lib Dem-run council in South Shropshire. For years, and under successive Governments, rural areas have not received the correct funding. That is not right; however, this is also about how the money is used. At the moment, the local council has an amber rating and is not fixing as many potholes as it should. At the moment, it is fixing only half the number done previously.
The other thing being raised with me that although potholes are being fixed, they come out and fix them on the Monday, and if there is a bit of rain on Tuesday and Wednesday, by Thursday the road is the same again. I have photos of people undertaking different measures to fix potholes that are completely unacceptable. Those roads are as bad at the end of the week as they were at the beginning.
We need to look at prevention. As a general rule, councils across the country are fixing more potholes than ever, but we are not seeing that in Shropshire, as per the local council’s numbers that I have quoted. Shropshire council continues to spend disproportionate amounts on reactive pothole repairs rather than on planned maintenance, because the Government have not given it the necessary long-term funding clarity. Evidence from the Road Emulsion Association shows that surface dressing extends life by around 10 to 15 years and uses 75% less bitumen and 80% less aggregate. It is campaigning for significantly increased investment in preventive road treatments and the maintenance of longer-term funding for councils. Every council will have to plan and will need clear visibility on the necessary funding.
As the Minister will know, developments in areas like artificial intelligence and autonomous robots could also start to future-proof how we deal with roads. I was delighted at the beginning of the year to see—as many others will have seen—the first autonomous vehicle able to identify cracks in the road and seal them early on, before they get worse. That is also reducing the number of lane closures, time invested and cost. As the RAC has stated—
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
The hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) is right to point out that the roads in Shropshire are in a terrible state after 16 years of Conservative management, so I am pleased that the Liberal Democrat administration has made fixing roads a key priority since coming into power 10 months ago. The council has created three new repair teams and dealt with 25,000 potholes since May, but during a wet and cold winter, it seemed like whack-a-mole, with new potholes appearing just as others are fixed. In January, 2,113 new potholes were reported, compared with just 1,200 the year before.
As Liberal Democrats, we have long called for increased investment in repairing our roads. That is particularly important in Shropshire, where the council manages nearly 3,200 miles of road, but has often received less funding per mile than many other councils. The Government’s additional dedicated roads funding is welcome, but at the same time, they are slashing our overall funding by 10%. That is no good when we need to have a maintenance programme in place, which is what the Liberal Democrats in Shropshire will be prioritising so that potholes do not appear in the first place.