Potty Mouthed Tirade – PAC Goes Potty Over Potholes

• Browse By Section
• News
• Potty Mouthed Tirade – PAC Goes Potty Over Potholes

The local roads that lead from supply chains to the houses where windows are being upgraded have been branded a ‘national embarrassment’ by the PAC, which has told the government to get its finger out to tackle a £15bn repair backlog.

The Public Accounts Committee says that while the government accepts that the condition of roads up and down the country have deteriorated, while admitting it does not know enough to understand what state roads are in due to poor data. Thus the current funding approach incentivises councils towards short-term repairs rather than prevention.

Conflicting information

Government data presented to the PAC’s inquiry shows the condition of local roads as stable despite industry estimates showing that the condition of local roads is worsening, as public satisfaction falls and pothole-related incidents rise. With information only collected on unclassified roads on a voluntary basis from local authorities, the Department for Transport admitted to the PAC that its data is not good enough. The inquiry also heard that local authorities may be doing just enough maintenance work to keep their roads from being rated 'red'.  Over a billion pounds a year goes to local authorities as part of the government’s funding to maintain local roads – but the PAC’s inquiry found that the DfT neither knows exactly how local authorities spend its funding as it is not ring-fenced, nor what it wants to achieve with it. The report further warns that funding is not being targeted at where it is most needed. The DfT does not take into account traffic volumes, underlying road condition or local environmental conditions such as whether a road is prone to flooding.

Short term

The PAC also criticises the short-term approach of central government funding for local authorities to repair local roads, which the DfT admitted to the inquiry is not best value for money. Providing only annual funding is likely to have pushed councils to focus more on reactive repair work, rather than preventing problems occurring in the first place. The report calls on government to simplify its funding to local authorities (currently given through twelve different funding pots),and to provide longer-term certainty on the amount and duration of funding.   Chair comment

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, chair of the Committee, said: “The declining state of England’s local roads is a national embarrassment. As well as harming the prospects for our economy and communities’ own social wellbeing, highways riddled with potholes pose an increasing safety threat to road users. Alarmingly, however, not only is the state of our local roads on the downslope, our inquiry shows the government is having to find out about these issues from industry bodies and road users themselves due to their own patchy data.

“This committee has long raised concerns around a failure across government departments to effectively fund and plan for the future, a theme that is certainly on show here, along with an overly tangled web of accountability. This committee shares our constituents’ frustration at these issues and hope our recommendations go some way to help the government take better responsibility for them.”

Picture: Potholes are blighting the county’s roads and the government’s spending is haphazard and so not tackling the real issues.

Article written by Cathryn Ellis
29th January 2025

Share

Related Articles