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The road to ruin
Page 20
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Potholes rule the highways as road maintenance worsens, reports Emma Penny.
There's no doubt that road maintenance is becoming a greater issue as hauliers face up to crumbling infrastructure; potholes and ruts and the damage caused by them are becoming a fact of life for many road transport companies. In fact, the problem is becoming so bad that a report published by the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) puts the average road maintenance spending backlog at £150 a head across the 60 million people in the UK.
Slippery budgets
But that's not the whole story: it warns that this varies from as little as £5 a head to more than £900 between local authorities.
So why are our roads facing such a maintenance backlog? It seems that failure to ringfence spending on roads is a key issue something the government says it is looking at.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Transport (DfT) admits that it's aware that some authorities are consistently under-spend "No single, commonly-accepted method of assessing the precise state of the nation's roads exists, making detailed benchmarking unacceptably difficult. At present it's up to each local authority to decide how much of their allocated highways maintenance budget they spend accordingly. In some instances, little more than haft is currently used to address the detenoration. Road planners are frustrated by the short-term 'sticking plaster mentality that provides temporary alleviation of symptoms, rather than long-term cure. We want an independent chief engineering adviser appointed to ensure a co-ordinated, long-term sustainable approach to infrastructure planning."
John Sanders is chairman of the Institute of Civil Engineers Municipal Engineering Board.
ing their budgets and have poor quality roads as a result. "We want to avoid this, and we are looking at it."
Many local authorities -75% of those that responded to the survey are also critical of the system for funding highways maintenance, citing a lack of long-term planning and budgeting as a key reason for the backlog. Again, the DfT spokeswoman says this is something it is planning to tackle: "We are looking at helping authorities plan over a longer term."
But local authorities place much of the blame on government, citing poor leadership as a key problem; 80% said it was disappointing or very disappointing.
Disillusioned authorities
And more than 80% thought the government's implementation of its Ten Year Plan was poor, with lack of funding being the main complaint.
However, the government says it has allocated £30bn for local road maintenance over the Ten Year Plan, and plans to tackle the issues involved. ICE is adamant that problems will only be solved by appointing an independent chief engineering advisor and ringfencing funding.