Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the extent to which local authorities in England divert money from their roads budgets to fund other policy areas.

The Department for Transport allocates capital funding to local highways authorities to enable them to maintain and improve their respective networks, based on their local knowledge, circumstances, and priorities. The funding is paid out as a grant under section 31 of the Local Government Act 2003, and is unringfenced. It is up to each authority to decide how best to spend it to fulfil its statutory duty under section 41 of the Highways Act 1980.

Revenue funding for highway maintenance is provided to local authorities each year by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government as part of the Local Government Finance Settlement. This funding is also unringfenced.

The Department publishes maintenance expenditure on local roads on gov.uk each year based on local authority outturn receipts. These show that capital expenditure on the local highway network is consistently higher than the funding provided by the Department for highway maintenance activities, which suggests that generally local authorities are not using the capital funding provided by the Department for other purposes.

The Department intends to introduce new reporting requirements on local highway authorities for the 2025/26 financial year, which will require them to provide further information to ensure residents can see how they intend to use the funding provided by the Government.