The Government has announced new rules for pothole funding, giving councils a clear choice between proving they maintain roads properly and losing around a third of next year’s allocation. The tarmac has welcomed this development, provided someone can explain whether a road can be graded red for swallowing a bicycle.
Under the announcement, local highway authorities must show that their highways money is being spent on road maintenance, publish reports, produce long term plans and improve training for their teams. This is presented as a route to smoother roads. It is also the first known funding system in which a pothole may eventually be asked to submit evidence of its own existence.
The Government says £1.6 billion is being made available for local roads, with £525 million held back unless councils can demonstrate that they are performing and spending the money as intended. The arrangement has the pleasing administrative neatness of a school detention, except the pupil is an entire council and the punishment is being denied money to repair the thing it failed to repair.
There are 154 local highway authorities in the new red, amber and green ratings system. Thirteen red rated authorities will receive £300,000 worth of expert planning support over two years. This means the councils with the most alarming road maintenance results will be given a substantial sum to plan how they might become better at receiving substantial sums for road maintenance.
The Government says the ratings and funding conditions will make taxpayers’ money work harder. That is a reasonable aim. Drivers have been paying for avoidable vehicle repairs, while the roads have been conducting a long running experiment in whether a patched hole becomes infrastructure if left unattended.
The policy also encourages preventative maintenance rather than endlessly filling the same holes after they have become local landmarks. A patch repairs the immediate problem. Preventative work stops the road from applying for planning permission to become a canyon.
For councils, the new system offers multi year funding and a clear test. For drivers, it offers the possibility that the road outside their house will eventually be judged on performance rather than historical importance. For the tarmac, it offers one final chance to produce its maintenance records before the Government asks the potholes to explain where all the money went.
Source: GOV.UK.
