Lilian Greenwood – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lilian Greenwood on 2015-12-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what funding his Department allocated to the Winter Weather Repair Fund in (a) 2013-14 and (b) 2014-15; and what funding it has allocated to that fund in (i) 2015-16 and (ii) 2016-17.

Andrew Jones

The Department for Transport is providing over £6.1 billion funding to local highway authorities in England between 2015 and 2021 for local highways maintenance. This includes repairing roads that might be damaged due to severe winter weather. This funding includes £50 million per annum from 2016 to 2021 for a dedicated Pothole Action Fund as announced in the recent Spending Review.

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, including £168 million to tackle potholes across the country, as well as £183.5 million we provided in 2014 to help repair roads damaged by the winter floods of 2013/14. Between 2010 to 2015 the maintenance funding was 27% or £1billion higher than in the previous five years.