Daniel Zeichner – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Daniel Zeichner on 2016-01-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to section 3.3 of his recently published British Road Safety Statement, how the incentive element of local roads maintenance funding will operate.

Andrew Jones

Well-planned maintenance to prevent potholes and other defects forming on the roads is vital. Councils that do this well get better value for every pound spent and improve their customer satisfaction. So, from 2016/17, this Government is introducing incentive funding to help encourage local highway authorities to manage their road networks better and achieve greater efficiencies. I hope we reach a point where, through efficiencies and collaboration, every highway authority receives the maximum level of funding available.

The Department for Transport is providing record funding of over £6.1 billion funding to local highway authorities in England between 2015 and 2021 for local highways maintenance.

This is additional to the funding of over £4.7 billion the Government provided to local highway authorities between 2010 and 2015 for highways maintenance. Between 2010 to 2015 the maintenance funding was 27% or £1billion higher than in the previous five years.