CIHT welcomes the release of the fifteenth report from the Public Accounts Committee ‘Maintaining strategic infrastructure: roads’ The report highlights concludes with the following points:  the Department of Transport’s unpredictable and fluctuating budgets for road maintenance over decades have put value for money at risk. 

The recommendations, which CIHT supports are as follows: 
•    The Department should hold the new Highways Agency to account for delivering the improved value for money that should be achievable given the certainty that will be provided by the planned funding reforms.
•    The Department should keep to the long-term budget allocations it has set out for local highway authorities to enable them and the supply chain to plan ahead confidently and efficiently.

The report then goes on to highlight that the Department has promoted best practice in local road maintenance but performance still varies locally.  The recommendations, which CIHT also supports, are as follows:
•    The most effective way in which the Department can influence practice is through its funding of road maintenance. The Department should use the way it allocates its funding to incentivise efficiency and collaboration and it should not fund poor performance.
•    The Department should identify those local highway authorities that carry out maintenance less efficiently and target the Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme at them.

The next issue highlighted is that a lack of information and understanding of road infrastructure and the costs of maintenance hinders decision-making on when and where it is best to spend the money.  CIHT would encourage all highway authorities to have an asset management strategy which should be underpinned by good data.  CIHT supports the recommendations outlined:
•    The Department should work with local highway authorities to ensure that they all develop appropriate data and understanding of their road infrastructure.
•    The Agency should also improve its understanding of its road infrastructure, how this deteriorates over time and the costs of maintenance interventions.

The issue of transport resilience was also highlighted and the point raised by the PAC report chimes with the recently published Resilience Review:  Whilst we understand the unpredictable nature of winter weather, too much road maintenance is inefficient because it is reactive and unplanned.
 
Again, the recommendations outlined are supported by CIHT:
•    The Department should ensure that Government funding promotes and supports the more even spread of expenditure over the year, with work carried out during the time when costs can be minimised.
•    The Highways Agency should develop longer-term plans for preventative maintenance and streamline its annual planning process to spread work more evenly across the year.
•    The Department should use the Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme to help local authorities quantify the benefits of more preventative work and to anticipate problems rather than react to them.

Finally, and of significance importance to the sector is the concluding point on revenue funding.  The report notes routine maintenance is essential to deal with increasingly frequent severe weather and to prevent long-term damage to infrastructure but a fall in the proportion of revenue funding to capital funding risks a reduction in this type of maintenance.  The recommendations, if fully taken on board, would be widely welcomed by the transport sector CIHT believes:
•    The Department should ensure the Highways Agency has the right balance of revenue and capital funding to enable it to carry out essential routine maintenance activities.
•    The Department for Transport and the Department for Communities and Local Government should examine the cumulative impact of their combined funding decisions on local authorities' road maintenance, and they should adjust their approach accordingly to support essential routine road maintenance activities.

Andrew Hugill, CIHT director of Policy and Technical Affairs commented: “We have consistently called for a need for certainty, and continuity of investment over a sustained period if overall improvements to our transport network are to be delivered effectively and efficiently. Giving certainty to the sector will enable it to deliver the health, environmental, social and economic benefits that a properly functioning highways and transportation network will bring."

To read the Public Accounts Committee report click here.