Agenda item

Question:

I have seen on the television and read in local and national social media that potholes are affecting the roads across the whole of the country, not just here in Wokingham.  Therefore, it appears that the government has underfunded local councils.

For me to understand this more fully, in Wokingham Borough, what funding has been allocated to road resurfacing type schemes in the past five years and what has been allocated for 2024/25 please?

Question

I have seen on the television and read in local and national social media that potholes are affecting the roads across the whole of the country, not just here in Wokingham. Therefore, it appears that the government has underfunded local councils.

For me to understand this more fully, in Wokingham Borough, what funding has been allocated to road resurfacing type schemes in the past five years and what has been allocated for 2024/25 please?

Answer

I have got a table on here for you, so you can have a look afterwards.  It sets out the allocations approved within the MTFP for the previous five year period and for the current financial year.

The government allocation has remained static at £2.280 million a year since 2018.  Nationally the latest Road Maintenance study found that there was a backlog of over £16.3 billion in local road repairs due to a decade of underfunding by this Conservative government, this is an increase in £2.1 billion in one year.

We also put money in as a council.  Contrary to what the Conservatives may claim, in their final budget, inherited by the Lib Dems, Conservatives cut the Council’s road maintenance by 28%. 

Despite the biggest financial challenges, the Council has ever seen, we have protected the road maintenance budget in cash terms.  We have also introduced innovations to make this money go further. 

Our roads are above average for condition when compared to other councils.  This is because we choose to invest in them ourselves, which we do via capital borrowing each year to a similar value to the government base grant.  Without that, our network condition would be far worse.

The government’s cancelled HS2 project has provided us with an additional £418,000 in 2023/24 and 2024/25 that we have committed to Strategic maintenance.

£418,000 will pay to resurface around a tiny 0.37% of our road network.  But 14% of our roads are already assessed as in need of resurfacing.  Therefore, the reality is that the additional funding is a drop in the ocean. 

Note 1 - Figures show the specific sum allocated to carriageway maintenance as part of the overall government grant block allocation. Other capital allocations are made from the grant block for maintenance of other assets.

Note 2 2023/24* and 2024/25* Additional funding £589K allocated to strategic maintenance. Additional £418k for each financial year spread over both years allocated to strategic maintenance.

Supplementary Question:

I think I understood the figures that were just given to me.  A very comprehensive answer thank you Paul. 

If I have understood it correctly, then for the last 6 years we have had a 25% cut in real terms from central government funding for road maintenance.  As a professional engineer I spent most of my career trying to maintain systems that were both hazardous and complex, where maintenance is always intended to prevent failure, whereas in local authority context, and most of the building trade, it is all about repair after the failure.  I am aware that we have put substantial money, just over £2million into this year’s budget.  Has the Borough always supplemented some of the shortfall by government, and how has lack of government funding contributed to the poor state of the roads around the Borough, please?

Supplementary Answer:

The previous Conservative administration did not actually supplement any government grant funding before 2020, and underfunding then together with the latest road survey findings provides a growing backlog of maintenance in England and Wales, now £16.3 billion.  The continued long term under funding by this Conservative government is certainly one of the main reasons for the poor state of all our nation’s roads.