Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what discussions her Department has had with (a) local authorities, (b) technology providers, and (c) other Government departments about the potential merits of using AI-enabled cameras on (i) bin lorries and (ii) other council vehicles to detect potholes; and if she will commission a review of the potential impact of such technology on (A) reporting times, (B) repair times, and (C) road maintenance costs.

The Department for Transport has opened the market for road condition monitoring technology to encourage innovation and efficiency in highway maintenance.

A new data standard published in September 2024, allows local highway authorities to use a wider range of AI-based technologies while also ensuring that local authorities receive robust, comparable data. This is available online, at: https://knowledge.bsigroup.com/products/road-condition-monitoring-rcm-data-specification.

Local Authorities are now able to use any technology which has been approved against this new standard, as assessed by approval trials run by the Transport Research Laboratory. There were 16 different companies that participated in the first approval trial in 2025, and the trials will be rerun again this summer, and then every two years, to encourage more technology companies to take part.

We have communicated the work widely across the highways sector via conferences and the sector press, to encourage the widest number of technology companies possible to participate.