Now into its 27th year, the latest ALARM (Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance) survey had record responses from 73% of local authorities across the UK. These revealed the shortfalls in money needed for adequate road maintenance and repairs.

While average highways maintenance budgets have gone up, the proportion being invested in the carriageway itself has dropped. As a result, there is a backlog, says Rick Green, chair of the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) of £12.6bn. Specifically, he qualifies the “backlog” as the amount that would be needed as a one-off payment to bring the network up to a condition that could be managed effectively.

The survey also concluded that nearly 37,000 miles of the network could need to be rebuilt in the next five years and that 1.7 million potholes were filled in 2021. 

Local authorities have a statutory obligation to maintain roads but, in our opinion, they're not receiving enough funding to do that – and that’s been the case for years, says Green. They are fairly realistic in what they say, but the shortfall across the country last year was £1bn.

In response to the detail in the ALARM survey, the AIA has called for a £2bn increase every year for the next ten years. That would, says Green, massively help highways engineers and local planners who are currently having to make difficult decisions about reactive and proactive maintenance.

 

The local authority highways engineers do a fantastic job. They are working under constraints and a lack of resources and I’m really impressed with what they do with what they've got, he adds. They're working hard to try and be as efficient and effective as they possibly can – it’s a really difficult task when they just haven’t got enough money.

What’s happening at the moment is a lot of reactive maintenance, which is why the statistic about filling 1.7 million potholes – or one every 19 seconds – is in the survey,” continues Green. It’s not effective or efficient, but it is making the road safe. In terms of the structural integrity of the world, no matter how good you are at fixing potholes, they're never really solving the problem – they are merely the symptom of a poorly maintained road.

Green suggests two parts to a potential solution to the problem:

The first part is having enough money in the first place, which may be wishful thinking. The second approach is for local authorities to move to five-year funding cycles, which he says will allow 'more sensible' decisions to be made. The local authorities can carry money over from one year to the next, rather than having to spend or not spend it in a ‘use it or lose it’ situation, he reasons. A longer timeline would give them an opportunity to better plan and better prepare, rather than being reactive.

Finally, Green adds that another advantage of these longer time-periods is the opportunity of looking at more environmentally friendly materials.

Without a long-term horizon for spending, it becomes difficult for engineers to select and trial and go forward with some degree of confidence to address the greener, more carbon-friendly materials that are starting to come to market now.

 

Want to read the ALARM survey in full? Head here.

Find out how CIHT has called for a better way to fund local highway maintenance through its ‘Improving Local Highways’ project.

Photo credit: David Thorpe/Alamy Stock Photo