Calls for Government’s March budget to tackle spiralling road maintenance costs

Liberal Democrat councillors are calling for the Chancellor to commit long term funding for road repairs in this year’s budget, as new analysis finds that it would take £12 billion to tackle current national local roads repair backlog.

In shocking new research, the Local Government Association have found that the Government spent 31 times more per mile maintaining motorways and A roads last year than they did on funding councils to repair local roads.

The new figures show that the Government spent £192,000 per mile on maintaining strategic roads, such as motorways or major A roads compared to just £6,000 per mile on fixing potholes on local roads. Latest estimates show that it is now costing councils up to 22 per cent more to repair a pothole.

York’s allocation of national road repair funding has been slashed by almost a third by the Conservative Government.

In 2020/21 York received a total of £4m towards highways maintenance from central government. This was cut by 29.5% (£1.2m) to £2.8m in 2021/22. This considerably smaller allocation has now been frozen for 3 years. As repair costs are rising due to inflation and poor weather conditions, this freeze will further mean a real-terms cut every single year.

This year’s Council budget proposes to invest twice as much as the national allocation to maintain and repair roads – 5.6m for 2023/24 - from Council’s funds.

Councillors are calling on the Government to use the upcoming Spring Budget to urgently provide councils with additional funding so they can tackle repair backlogs and bring local road surfaces up to scratch. The Government could help councils fill over four million extra potholes next year if they urgently meet the additional costs that are estimated to be around £130 million.

Councillor Stephen Fenton, transport spokesperson for York Liberal Democrats, commented:

“Underfunding of national road repair budgets, coupled with soaring inflation, shortage in materials and rising backlogs is making it increasingly harder for councils to keep roads in good condition, affecting all users, including pedestrians and cyclists.

“We need to have real, long-term funding that allows councils to undertake more planned maintenance and not just emergency repairs. The longer it takes for the funding to be put in place to tackle the backlog of repairs, the more it is going to cost to put it right in the future.

“The Chancellor should use the Spring Budget to provide funding that is needed to fix potholes and begin to tackle the backlog of repairs, before the issue spirals out of control.”