Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the finding by the RAC in February 2024 that council road maintenance in England dropped by 45 per cent in 2022–23 compared to the five years previously; and whether road maintenance levels have improved since then.

The Department’s officials meet regularly with local authority representatives and other experts in the road maintenance industry to discuss best practice. Ministers have also met with key stakeholder groups, including the Pothole Partnership which comprises organisations representing road users and industry.

The Department agrees that local highway authorities should focus on preventative rather than reactive maintenance activities, and this advice is set out in the Code of Practice on Well Managed Highway Infrastructure, which is available online. The Department is committed to updating this guidance and has begun work to scope out urgently which parts need updating and how. The Department strongly advocates a risk-based whole lifecycle asset management approach to local authority highways maintenance programmes, and encourages authorities to consider all parts of the highway network, such as bridges, cycleways, and lighting columns, and not just the fixing of potholes or resurfacing of roads.

Decisions on how much to spend on their local highway networks each year are matters for local highway authorities, who have a duty under Section 41 of the Highways Act 1980 to maintain the public highway network in their area. The Department for Transport collects and publishes on gov.uk each year data on authorities’ capital and revenue expenditure on their highway maintenance activities. The data shows that, at a national level, total spending on local road maintenance in the financial year 2022/23 was broadly similar to total spend in each of the previous five years.

This Government recognises the importance of well-maintained roads and has provided an additional £500m for highway maintenance for the year 2025/26 – a near 50% uplift on the current baseline. This has resulted in an 36% increase on average to individual local highway authority allocations, as well as providing highway maintenance funding top-ups to London authorities and mayoral areas already receiving City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements. These allocations can be found on gov.uk.

In addition, the Department is taking a number of steps to improve its understanding of the condition of local roads. It worked with the British Standards Institute and the highway sector to develop a new road condition data standard for local highway authorities, which was published last year. This will enable them to utilise new technologies, including AI, to identify potholes and other defects in their highway network more promptly.