The Autumn Budget has earmarked £7.3bn for road repairs across England, with money allocated to every region to tackle the growing maintenance backlog. The government says the package will help fix and prevent potholes, with overall funding for road maintenance set to double by 2029.
A key change in the settlement is a tougher transparency regime for local authorities. The share of funding conditional on councils publishing detailed spending reports will rise from 8% to 30%, unlocking more than £500m a year on top of core allocations for those that comply.
The £7.3bn will be distributed across nine English regions. Allocations include £800m for the North West, £500m for Yorkshire and the Humber, £700m for the East Midlands, £800m for the West Midlands, £1.2bn for the East of England, £1.5bn each for the South East and South West, £300m for London and £30m for the North East. This comes in addition to a previously announced £1.6bn investment.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said the government is on track to “fix an extra million potholes a year by the end of this Parliament”, adding that doubling the funding promised by the previous administration will help keep “businesses moving, communities connected and growth reaching every part of the country”. Transport secretary Heidi Alexander described the package as “the biggest-ever investment in road maintenance”, aimed at giving councils the long-term certainty to “get things right first time”.
The funding boost follows a series of stark assessments of the condition of local roads. The Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance survey published in March put the backlog of repairs at £16.81bn, the highest level recorded, and estimated that the average UK road is resurfaced only once every 93 years.
Despite the strategic importance of the network, only around 1% of the road asset’s £400bn value is spent on maintenance each year. The survey suggested that even if the full £16.81bn were made available as a one-off, it would still take at least 12 years to clear the backlog of works.
Concerns over data and planning have also been raised at national level. A National Audit Office report last July, based on local authority returns, found that 48% of local roads in England are in ‘good’ condition, 35% ‘adequate’ and 17% ‘poor’. The NAO highlighted a near-£4bn gap between the Department for Transport’s estimate of repair needs and that of the Asphalt Industry Alliance, concluding that the department lacks a complete picture of the true state of the network.
For contractors and suppliers, the combination of higher capital allocations and stricter reporting requirements is expected to drive more planned, long-term maintenance programmes. However, with the estimated backlog still more than double the new funding pot, the sector will be watching closely to see how quickly the additional money translates into visible improvements on the ground.
