Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate his Department has made of the cost to the public purse of maintenance per mile on (a) motorways, (b) the strategic road network and (c) the local road network in the 2022-23 financial year.

The plans for maintaining and renewing the Strategic Road Network (SRN) are set as part of a five-year Road Investment Strategy and are aimed at sustaining the availability, safety, performance, operation, reliability, and longevity of the SRN’s physical assets to deliver value to road users.

National Highways are responsible for the management of the Strategic Road Network which includes motorways and some major A roads, and their expenditure on Maintenance and Renewals is published online in its annual report and accounts:

https://nationalhighways.co.uk/media/0k1mwvsp/nh_ar23_interactive.pdf.

This reflects that in the financial year 2022/23 National Highways spent £240 million on maintenance of the SRN and £908 million on renewals (replacement or refurbishment of assets as they reach the end of their service life).

The Annual Report and Accounts also outlines that NH oversees 4,541 miles of road across its network. On average more is spent on maintaining each mile of the SRN compared to each mile of the local road network, which reflects the considerably higher traffic volumes carried.

On the local road network, local authority expenditure data is collected by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). Total expenditure data is only available up until 2021/22, where total maintenance expenditure for local authority roads was £4.168 billion.