Reporting repairs won’t solve pothole crisis – AIA
The Asphalt Industry Alliance has warned that government plans to hold councils accountable for repairing roads will not solve the pothole crisis.
The government has said that councils in England must evidence the work they are doing to fix the roads in their area and develop a strategy to maintain road surfaces.
Failure to comply will jeopardise a share of the funding government has dedicated to the problem.
David Giles, chair of the Asphalt Industry Alliance, said: “Government commitments to local roads spending is welcome, but short-term cash injections, even with greater accountability and strings attached, are not likely to improve conditions.
“Decades of underfunding now means that the backlog of carriageway repairs stands at almost £17bn and one in every six miles of the local road network reported to have less than five years’ structural life remaining. So, if we want our local roads to improve, the focus needs to shift from the number of potholes filled to giving local highway engineers the tools to do the job so that they don’t form in the first place.”
Council budgets
He continued: “Local authorities have told us they would need their budgets to more than double for next five to 10 years to tackle the backlog of repairs. That’s why we have been calling for a multi-year frontloaded and ringfenced funding commitment, similar to those that the rail and motorway sectors benefit from.
“This would allow authorities to plan, provide better value for money for taxpayers and deliver a more resilient network while helping to kickstart the government’s economic growth plans.”
The news comes after last week’s publication of the Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance survey report, which estimated it would cost £17bn to fix the potholes blighting British roads and warned the bill could increase in the coming years with 17% of the local road network having less than five years’ structural life remaining and 52% having less than 15 years left.
