Potholes and Road Maintenance

Julie Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I will come on to the blaming of local councils, but first I will finish talking about roads in my constituency.

Bridgewater Street has Maxton House, a supported home for the elderly and people with dementia, on it. Over a number of months, there have been six accidents alone on that particular road. Again, the work has not been done. A recent RAC survey found that the condition and maintenance of local roads was the second-ranked motoring issue in an extensive list that also included safety, cost and mobility concerns.

Local authorities have paid more than £70 million in pothole compensation since 2013. That amounts to unnecessary wastage of more than 25% of the £250 million the Government announced in its 2013 pothole action fund. Collectively, the AA calculates that potholes are costing drivers and insurers £1 million every month. That situation is not normal or acceptable. It is a result of a perverse funding system, as was highlighted by a respondent to the House of Commons Facebook page. Discussing today’s debate, Rob commented:

“England’s roads are just one big pothole; the councils have neglected them through lack of cash”.

That is the important point: it is about a lack of cash. My local authority has had its budget slashed by 54% in the last eight years. Since it has to satisfy its legal obligations, such as looking after the elderly, the young and the vulnerable, there is no money left. I do not know where hon. Members expect it to find the money. I know there is a magic money tree for the Democratic Unionist party, but there is not one in Bolton for the roads.

[Julie Cooper (Burnley) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate and making a very strong case. My own authority, Conservative-controlled Lancashire County Council, is out there measuring reported potholes to decide whether they are deep enough to repair. Many do not satisfy the requirement, but what we find is that small potholes become big potholes, which become trenches. It is a total false economy.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

That is absolutely correct. In 2015-16, my local authority spent £6.5 million on repairing roads. It had to find that money. Continually to blame local authorities for the fact that they do not have the money is completely wrong. I do not know where the £23 billion for potholes came from, because I can assure hon. Members that none of that money has made its way to my council in Bolton. My council now needs at least £108 million to fully repair the potholes across the borough. The Government repeatedly argue that this is a local council issue and that it is down to local councils to allocate more money. How are they to allocate money they do not have? Where are they expected to find that money from? Most parts of Bolton do not have massive, expensive homes. Bolton does not have loads of businesses it can raise local rates from. It needs national Government settlement funding, which has been cut for the last eight years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I am sure there are good ways of trying to repair roads, but they all require money. Even the cheaper option that the hon. Gentleman suggests requires money to be made available. The problem is that the money is not there.

One of the purposes of today’s debate is to highlight to the Minister and the Government the importance of the issue. I do not know why people here seem to be in denial about the fact that there is chronic underfunding and cutting of grants to local authorities. I know some constituencies and parts of the country are very wealthy and can raise enough rates to meet all their needs, but my local authority needs assistance.

[Julie Cooper]

And mine.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

So do many others, such as Burnley. Chronic underfunding has led to extremely worrying short-termism on the part of local councils. They have opted for the inexpensive, short-term solution, which of course fails to tackle the actual issue of repairing the whole road. We know that at some later point, there will be problems on that road.

It does not have to be that way. I urge the Government to increase funding to local authorities. They have said that they gave some money in a package in March, but that was not new funding; it had already been announced. A huge funding gap still exists, and the backlogs are still there. We need that money.

The Government need to understand a simple point: if they keep doing the same thing, we will see the same result: we will have to endure worse and less safe roads. We will have to pick up the personal costs of damage to our vehicles and the collective cost of wasted taxpayers’ money on compensation. On top of those fees, we will have to endure more years of this Government deflecting blame and refusing to take responsibility, when their miserly approach has come back to bite the people that they purport to represent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

One of the many reasons why it is wrong to characterise the Government as not investing in infrastructure is that we have, for the first time in decades, created a roads fund, to be funded by vehicle excise duty. It is subject to negotiation with the Treasury, of course, but we hope to continue on the path of increasing investment across our road network and supporting not just strategic roads but local roads. Investment already runs at a little over £1 billion a year. I will of course take the Local Government Association’s suggestions to heart, but my hon. Friend should be aware that, over the next few years, we will be investing on a more hypothecated basis at a very high level.

[Julie Cooper]

On the funding of road maintenance, does the Minister agree that prevention is far better than cure? In my authority of Lancashire, eight years of neglected road maintenance, due to a lack of funding, has led to a very expensive problem. Does he agree that lessons need to be learned for the future?

[Jesse Norman]

I agree with the hon. Lady, and she has accurately reproduced one of the central principles of the 2012 potholes review, which was widely endorsed by everyone. Later in my speech, I will talk about how seriously we are taking that point.