Maintaining strategic infrastructure: roads
6 Jun 2014 12:34 PM
Full report: Maintaining strategic
infrastructure: roads
Funding pressures on highways authorities have
encouraged efficiency and innovation in how budgets for road maintenance are
spent, but public value will be lost unless funding becomes more predictable,
according to a report by the National Audit Office.
The
actual reduction in budget for the Highways Agency, which maintains the
strategic road network, will now be seven per cent, rather than the 19 per cent
announced in the Spending Review 2010, owing to injections of capital funding
which have offset the reductions.
According to the NAO, however, the lack of
predictability has practical implications and may cost more in the long term.
Historically, local highway authorities spend more revenue on maintenance, but
report that they now carry out fewer routine activities such as clearing
gullies which are essential to preventing water seeping into roads’
sub-structure. In addition, road maintenance contractors have cited
unpredictable income as a disincentive for them to invest in improving
efficiency.
The
current pattern of funding, combined with the need to spend money within the
financial year, means that most road maintenance is carried out between
September and March. Although this is less disruptive for road users, it is
less efficient than carrying out the work at other times of year because
materials can be more difficult to handle in cold and wet conditions, and
daylight hours are shorter.
Additional funding for emergency repairs is also made
available at the end of the financial year. As a result, almost all highways
authorities need extra capacity from the market at the same time, making it
less likely that they will obtain value for money.
The
Department for Transport is planning to change the Agency’s status to
that of a limited company wholly publicly owned by the government, with
six-year funding certainty for capital projects and maintenance, and therefore
the potential to achieve better value for money.
Although recent data showed that the surface condition
of the strategic road network improved between 2003 and 2013, it may be that
deterioration has not yet become visible. Road users’ satisfaction with
the general upkeep of the network fell by two per cent between 2011-12 and
2012-13 to 91 per cent.
'Stop/start funding makes long-term planning
more difficult for highways authorities. The Department for Transport
understands the threat posed to road maintenance from the uncertainty of
funding, but establishing a new government company to address the problems will
not, in itself, be enough. The Department should work with the Treasury and the
Department for Communities and Local Government to address the unpredictability
of funding for both the strategic and local road
networks.'
Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office,
6 June 2014
Notes for Editors
£344bn
Estimated value of England's roads
187,000
Miles in England's road networks
£4bn
Spent on maintaining England's roads, 2012-13
4,400 miles of carriageway and 9,000
bridges
In the strategic road network maintained by the Highways Agency. It is 2 per
cent of all roads, but carries a third of all vehicle traffic and two-thirds of
all road freight movements in England
152
Local highway authorities, including Transport for London, which maintain the
local road network
183,000 miles and more than 52,000
bridges
In the local road network, including 113,000 miles of streets and lanes
(unclassified roads)
£10.3 billion
Central government funding allocated to road maintenance, April 2015 to March
2021
1. Press notices and reports are
available from the date of publication on the NAO website, which is at
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2. The National Audit Office
scrutinises public spending for Parliament and is independent of government.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), Amyas Morse, is an Officer of
the House of Commons and leads the NAO, which employs some 860 staff. The
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public sector bodies. He has statutory authority to examine and report to
Parliament on whether departments and the bodies they fund have used their
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