Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what schemes are available to help communities which have a high number of unadopted roads, due to the closure of large industry, get adopted status for those roads.

The respective owners of private roads are responsible under legislation for ensuring that these roads are brought up to the required standard before local highway authorities can ‘adopt’ them and then maintain them at public expense. In cases where there are large areas of unadopted roads due to the closure of large industries, these may be improved by new developers as part of their development projects or the local authority can bid for Government funds through various programmes like the Local Growth Fund.