The Department for Transport (DfT) is failing in its responsibility to care for local roads such that their condition is now a “national embarrassment”.
That's according to a damning new report published by the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee – the group of MPs responsible for overseeing the value for money and services provided by government programmes.
Its inquiry found that “the state of England’s local roads is declining” yet “the DfT neither knows exactly how authorities spend its funding, as it is not ring-fenced, nor what it wants to achieve with it”.
Among the issues identified in the report are a failure to take policy and the use of taxpayer funds “sufficiently seriously” when looking at the 183,000 miles of local roads across England – 98% of the total network.
It added that the DfT has insufficient knowledge of the condition of the local road network and that its approach to funding their maintenance is too focused on short-term repairs.
The report comes after the National Audi Office (NAO) last year reported that the government “does not know” whether £1.6 billion of taxpayer money is actually making a difference to the state of English roads.
The NAO said the DfT does not have a good enough understanding of the condition of local roads, nor does it allocate funding to local authorities “as effectively as possible”.
The Public Accounts Committee's chairman and Conservative MP for the North Cotswolds, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, 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, [but also] our inquiry shows government are having to find out about these issues from industry bodies and road users themselves, due to their own patchy data.”
In turn, the Committee has made nine key recommendations.
On the failure to take the condition of local roads seriously, it said the DfT should “clearly set out its roles and responsibilities”, because it "has not taken enough responsibility, given the declining conditions of local roads across England”.
On the DfT’s insufficient knowledge of the condition of roads, it suggested the DfT should work with the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government to better its odds of achieving a reliable dataset.
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You're blaming the driver ! If the roads were properly maintained then there would be no need to claim.
The fault lies with the authorities. It's not that there's no money, it's just that money wasn't spent wisely enough. Trying to do jobs on the cheap, poor or seemingly non-existant management, lack of co-ordination between utility companies. Why tear up a road once when you can tear it up three times in as many months?
How many times do we see a minor road repair taking over a week. A bunch of trucks turn up on a Monday, they put out cones and traffic signals, they take them away on the Friday and in between, we're lucky to seeanyone doing work. if we do, it's a group of 8 guys watching one guy work. Everysingle time I pass the roadworks at the bottom of my road, whetehr it be morning, midday or late afternoon, those workers are in their cabs reading newspapers, sleeping or on their mobiles. I haven't been to another country that works so inefficiently. Councils over here, spend vast amounts of taxpayers money doing nothing. And they get away with it.
If we want better roads, we need an overhaul in the way we go about repairing them. Whatever the cause, to blame the motorist is just insane. What next, it's the fault of EV drivers for buying heavy cars?
You'd think they would know when roads were last resurfaced and therefore when they might need doing again. Funding for maintenance should be the easiest of any government department as they directly tax the users through VED and Fuel Duty. Expect the real issue is those funds being syphoned off elsewhere.
I wonder what the railways do where there are regular scheduled works and failure of tracks would be a massive safety issue.
Sorting the nation's roads is impossible, there a never ending job, filling in holes are generally a temporary thing,and the hole us appears again in a few weeks or sooner, a complete resurfacing ie too costly for the local councils to sanction.