During 2013 the Government spoke about increasing investment in road repairs. As the year draws to an end, Howard Robinson, chief executive of the Roads Surface Treatments Association, wonders when the rhetoric will translate into action.

"At the start of the year, the poor state of the road network was underlined by ALARM, the annual survey of the local road network, undertaken by the Asphalt Industry Alliance and based upon data supplied by 70% of the local authorities in England and Wales.

"The survey found that despite spending £113M on filling 2.2M potholes; the condition of the local road network has worsened. The deterioration of the road network has severe financial consequences with local authorities paying out more than £32M in compensation claims from road users for vehicle damage or personal injury. This is a 50% increase on the previous year. More alarming is the cost of the deteriorating road network for small and medium-sized businesses from lower productivity, increased fuel consumption, vehicle damage and delayed deliveries: £52Bn a year."

Mr Robinson says decades of under funding have forced local authorities to adopt short term expensive patch-and-mend rather than undertake cost effective long term maintenance. It costs only £2/m² to surface dress and maintain a road but costs an average £78/m² to repair potholes. He says.

"In his March budget the Chancellor of the Exchequer declared transport infrastructure to be the 'economic arteries' of the country and that investment in the sector will 'get growth flowing' to every part of the country. The headline infrastructure investment announcement was an extra £3Bn a year 2015-16. 

"However, this is uncertain because a new government will then be in power. Investment in the crumbling road network is needed now: not in two years' time.

"In the summer, it seemed that that the government had at last understood this with the publication of the command paper, 'Action for Roads – a network for the 21st century'. In it the Government promises to resurface 80% of the strategic road network over the next seven years. Also proposed is setting up the Highways Agency as a publicly owned company to further remove it from the democratic process so freeing it from Whitehall red tape and removing the potential for future governments to cut the roads budget. Crucially, the Government proposes to that the new Highways Agency would be given a long term, ring-fenced, funding settlement to progress the £28Bn spending plans for road construction and maintenance as outlined in June's spending review."

Mr Robinson adds that the proposals are welcomed as they would lessen the short term thinking which is such an obstacle to the provision of a well maintained road network. "However, many of the projects included in the paper have either been announced already or will not start until 2015-16 at the earliest. It is important that the attractive headlines of the command paper do not detract from the fundamental issue of chronic historic £8Bn under-spending in road maintenance an issue not addressed by the command paper.

"This year has seen announcements and declarations of the need to increase road maintenance funding. Yet, the overall condition of the road network deteriorates. In the forthcoming Autumn Statement we need to see the rhetorical headlines become real action in addressing the historic shortfall in road maintenance spending and in providing long-term certainty of future funding."

(Photo credit: akeg@flickr)

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