A new report has found the cost of repairing pothole-plagued local roads in England and Wales has soared by almost a quarter in a year due to a lack of long-term investment. A survey of councils by the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) suggested it would cost £12.64 billion to return local roads to a condition from which cost-effective maintenance would be possible.
That figure is up from £10.24 billion one year ago. The AIA’s annual local authority road maintenance (Alarm) survey indicated that the proportion of council budgets allocated to highway maintenance has fallen during the 2021/22 financial year compared with the previous 12 months.
The proportion has fallen from 5.5 per cent to 5.1 per cent in England (excluding London), from 2.0 per cent to 1.6 per cent in London, and from 4.5 per cent to 3.0 per cent in Wales. Almost one in five local roads could need to be rebuilt in the next five years due to their condition, which is nearly 37,000 miles of road. The Alarm survey also suggested that local roads are typically resurfaced only once every 70 years.
