Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what proportion of local highways maintenance funding allocated by her Department has been received by predominantly rural local authorities in each of the last three years.

A full explanation of how highways maintenance funding is allocated is available online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/highways-maintenance-funding-allocations. Local highway authorities can choose to spend Highways Maintenance Block funding on all parts of their highway network. Funding is not specifically for potholes.

Rural-urban classification at the level of local highway authorities is published by the Office for National Statistics and can be found online at https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/datasets/ons::rural-urban-classification-2021-of-upper-tier-local-authorities-2023-in-ew/about. Local highway authorities are usually large geographies, most of which include a mix of both rural and urban areas, so the rural-urban classification at this level can only give a broad indication of the overall classification of an area.