Road Maintenance

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Lilian Greenwood)]

It is clear that local roads maintenance is an issue that affects every one of us, and that our constituents care about deeply. I am grateful to all hon. Members who have spoken up on behalf of their constituents. I assure them that the Government get it and are determined to do something about it. There were too many contributions for me to mention them all, but my hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) highlighted why it is important that local councils are required to publish reports on their plans. We want people to know if their local council is choosing not to spend the extra funding that we are providing on fixing their cratered, potholed, pimpled roads. I assure her and other members of the Transport Committee that work is already under way on a complete review of the guidance—the code of practice on well-managed highway infrastructure, to give it its full name.

I am really pleased that my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams) and for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) highlighted the innovation that has been adopted by Stoke-on-Trent’s Labour council and its highways department—investing in AI to properly understand and monitor its road network and using the Pothole Pro to undertake long-lasting repairs. I am really sorry to hear that Conservative Staffordshire county council is not as responsive to the concerns of my hon. Friends’ constituents who are calling for investment in road safety. As my hon. Friends the Members for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) and for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) rightly reminded us, Staffordshire residents can do something about that problem by voting Labour on 1 May, as can residents in Derbyshire, Northumberland, Hertfordshire, Lancashire and many other parts of the country.

I am grateful to Scottish colleagues for their contributions. It is disappointing to hear that the SNP Government are not acting to tackle the state of Scotland’s roads, as this Government are in England and my Labour colleagues are in Wales. The Scottish people deserve better. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) raised the important issue of pavement parking, as did others, and he was right to do so, because it contributes to our broken pavements, which are so unsafe for many elderly and disabled people. The previous Government promised action for almost a decade and did nothing. We plan to respond to the 2020 consultation and set out our policy in this area.

When I tell people that I am the roads Minister, I can pretty much guarantee that the first question they will ask is, “What are you doing to fix my street?” It is not surprising that this issue is so often raised with us when we are out and about in our constituencies. The appalling state of our local roads and pavements is all too visible to us every single day. As we have heard time and again in this debate, it is unsafe for pedestrians, cyclists and bikers, it makes motorists’ lives a misery and it is holding back economic growth.

The shadow Minister suggested that things were worse in 2006 than under his Government, but according to the RAC pothole index, drivers were nearly 40% more likely to have a pothole-related breakdown in 2024 than they were under the last Labour Government.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lilian Greenwood]

Not right now, as the hon. Gentleman has already had an opportunity to speak on this issue.

[Jerome Mayhew]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can you give me some advice? Where the Minister has misquoted me and refuses to give way, what steps can I take to correct the record?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I thank the hon. Member for his point of order. I think that is a matter of debate, and it is now on the record.

[Lilian Greenwood]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

As the Secretary of State said earlier, this Government inherited crumbling roads with local highway authorities struggling to stay on top of an ever-increasing backlog of maintenance. Of course, there are many reasons for that, including the weather and the increasing volume and weight of traffic using our roads, but it is abundantly clear that the funding provided by the previous Government was simply not enough to allow local authorities to deal with the problem.

No one knows this better than Karen Shore, our Labour candidate in Runcorn and Helsby, who served for many years as the cabinet member for highways on her local council. As she and we remember, the Tories made promises for 14 years but, in reality, any funding uplifts were short-lived and never fully materialised. It is perhaps not surprising that the Conservative Benches have been so empty during this debate.

This Government are determined to ensure that things will be different, and we will do better.

[Peter Swallow]

Does the Minister know whether any Reform MPs have constituents with pothole issues? Of course, we would not know because they are not here.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and people can see for themselves which party is on the side of motorists and road users.

We have provided an extra £500 million in the current financial year, on top of the previous Government’s funding baseline and the Network North money for 2024-25. It is a huge increase. For most authorities, it means around 36% or 37% more than last year, and of course it is just the start.

As many hon. Members have observed today, a one-off uplift will not fix all the problems—it was never going to. However, through the spending review, we are determined to secure a long-term funding settlement to allow local highway authorities to plan ahead with confidence. Strangely, the only time the previous Government promised long-term funding was nine months before the general election, knowing full well that they had not put any cash aside to pay for it.

We are determined to ensure that the extra funding we are providing genuinely leads to extra spending by local authorities, rather than simply allowing them to put less of their own funding into highway maintenance. That is exactly why we are introducing the extra reporting requirements that the Secretary of State set out.

The information that councils publish in June will shine a spotlight on this issue in a way that has not happened before. It will allow local people to see for themselves what repairs and resurfacing their council is planning, and how this compares with other local authorities. It will help the Department and the public to understand matters such as which authorities are putting their own funding into the pot, and which are doing the most to prepare their networks for the wetter winters that we are already seeing.

[Robbie Moore]

I welcome the announcement on better transparency in how local government is spending money on potholes, but the challenge I have in the Bradford district is that, according to the answer to a freedom of information request, only 4% of highway spending over six years was spent in the Keighley and Ilkley constituency. The vast majority of the highway spending has been spent within Bradford city centre. How will the Government ensure that, across a local authority area, there is fairness in the amount of highway spending allocated across the whole district, rather than just on city centre projects?

[Lilian Greenwood]

This Government believe in devolution. It is for local councils, elected by local people, to decide their own priorities.

I know we have spent a lot of time talking about potholes this evening, and despite all the attention they get and the headlines they generate, potholes are only a small part of what local highway authorities are dealing with. Local highway authorities have to look after complex networks of pavements, cycle lanes, bridges, tunnels, lighting columns, drainage channels, culverts, retaining walls and much else besides. Potholes are just the tip of a very large iceberg, but they are the thing that is most visible to road users, whether they are in a car, on a bike, or being jarred while sitting on a bus. Yes, we are asking local authorities to give us their best estimate of the number of potholes they have filled in recent years. We also want them to tell us what they are doing to shift their focus to long-term preventive maintenance, because avoiding potholes forming in the first place is, as the Public Accounts Committee recognised, generally much better value for money than temporarily patching the same pothole again and again once it has become a safety-critical problem.

Let me move on to street works and to what we are doing to respond to the complaints that our roads often seem to be dug up again and again by utility companies in an unco-ordinated way. It is the responsibility of the highway authority to co-ordinate any works taking place on its roads. The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Manuela Perteghella) rightly described the cost of failing to do so for local people and businesses. We are committed to ensuring that the proper policy framework is in place to enable authorities to co-ordinate and plan road and street works effectively. My hon. Friends the Members for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) and for Stafford will be pleased to hear that we have recently announced that we will be doing more to hold utilities to account for disruptive works. We will be doubling fixed penalty notices to increase the level of deterrent they provide and improve compliance. Charges will also be applied at weekends and on bank holidays to reduce congestion and disruption during those times.

Lane rental can help highway authorities to reduce the impact of works taking place on the busiest roads at the busiest times. Schemes allow authorities to charge utilities up to £2,500 per day for works on those roads, encouraging companies to work smarter. We know that many more councils are developing lane rental schemes, and we plan to update our guidance to help them develop those schemes. We have announced changes that mean that highway authorities will be required to spend at least 50% of surplus funds raised from lane rental on road maintenance.

To conclude, I repeat my thanks to all hon. Members who have contributed to what has been a rich and positive debate. We all want to see an improvement to the state of our local roads, pavements and other parts of our highways networks. I doubt that this will be the last time we discuss potholes, but this Government are determined to give local authorities the tools and resources they need to get on top of the problem. We want local councils to be more transparent about what they are doing with taxpayers’ money, and we want them to follow best practice. We want councils to learn from each other and benchmark each other’s performance, so that the overall standard of delivery is driven up. Getting on top of the backlog in local highway maintenance is a high priority for this Government. We recognise that there are tough choices here for councils, but getting more potholes fixed was a manifesto commitment and one we are determined to deliver. We have hit the ground running but I know that there is a lot more still to do. I will say more in a few months’ time about the longer term funding outlook for all local authorities. We look forward to working with councils over the months ahead to ensure that our funding uplift is making a real difference to all our constituents.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered road maintenance.