Guidance

Letter to local authorities about local highway maintenance funding in 2025 to 2026

Published 24 March 2025

Applies to England

Sender

Emma Ward CBE, Director General, Roads Transport Group, Department for Transport

Recipients

Chief executives, local authorities in England

Letter re local highways maintenance funding in 2025 to 2026

Dear Chief Executive,

On 20 December 2024, the government announced the 2025 to 2026 highway maintenance funding allocations for all eligible highway authorities and mayoral combined authorities – this included additional funding announced by the Chancellor as part of the 2024 Budget.

The government has said that 25% of the £500 million additional funding for 2025 to 2026 will be contingent on local highway authorities demonstrating to government that they are complying with certain criteria aimed at driving best practice and continual improvement in highways maintenance practice.

The rationale behind these requirements stems from the recent National Audit Office report and subsequent Public Accounts Committee hearing on the condition and maintenance of local roads in England. Both have recommended that the Department for Transport (DfT) seeks to improve its understanding of the condition of our country’s roads, and by sharing this information your authority can help secure much-needed funding for your highway networks as well as better informing local people of the steps you are taking to improve them.

This letter sets out what DfT will expect to see from your authority, and by when, for you to unlock the full funding uplift. DfT is particularly keen to ensure that the increase in DfT funding leads to increased highway maintenance expenditure by local authorities and that your expenditure strikes the right balance between long-term preventative maintenance and reactive repairs.

Reactive repairs are, of course, often necessary for safety and other reasons, but temporary quick fixes should be avoided wherever possible. A proper risk-based asset management approach will reduce the need for short-term patching, and, as set out in the Code of practice on well-managed highway infrastructure, when determining the balance between structural, preventative and reactive maintenance, authorities should adopt the principle that prevention is better than cure.

In the interests of transparency and to ensure that your local taxpayers can see the difference that the additional funding is making, DfT will require all authorities to publish on their websites by the end of June 2025 a plain-English report detailing:

• how much your authority is spending on highway maintenance, on both capital-funded and revenue-funded activities, and how this compares to the previous 5 years

• the overall state of your network, including what percentage of your roads are in what condition, and how this has changed in recent years (in other words, highlighting for your residents in an accessible way the information published within RDC01 Road condition statistics

• an estimate of how many potholes your authority has filled in in each of the last 5 years

• your plans for 2025 to 2026 including which parts of your network you plan to resurface

• the balance between preventative and reactive maintenance in your plans

• what your authority is doing to minimise the disruption caused by utility companies’ streetworks and to ensure that these are planned and coordinated effectively including with your own maintenance plans

• what you are doing to make your networks more resilient to the changing climate

• what you are doing to follow best practice and deliver innovation and efficiency

See a suggested template for these reports.

In combined authority areas, each local highway authority should publish a report, although the combined authority may also publish a report bringing these together if it wishes to do so. In London, Transport for London (TfL) and the boroughs should each publish reports, with TfL’s report covering the Transport for London road network (TLRN). In the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) area, DfT will discuss with GMCA what arrangements might be appropriate given the ongoing discussions on the integrated settlement and its associated outcomes framework.

DfT will expect your authority to share a weblink to your report by 30 June 2025. These should be emailed to roadmaintenance@dft.gov.uk.

DfT will also require authorities to provide more detailed information to confirm that you are following certain best practice criteria. This information will need to be received by 31 October 2025 and will need to be signed off by the leader of the council, or the cabinet member with responsibility for highways, and your Section 151 officer. The information required is set out in more detail at annex B, and includes:

• further detail on the value of your highway assets
• compliance with certain best practice criteria

All the above will help enable DfT to have a clearer sense of how the funding is being used, the degree to which additional funding is being allocated to highways maintenance and the extent to which authorities are following asset management best practice. It will help DfT to assess, for each authority, what its maintenance spend is as a percentage of the total value of the asset and allow for more benchmarking between authorities.

Finally, you should note that the increase in roadworks enabled by this additional funding may cause some concerns among local road users. There has been a marked increase in recent years in levels of verbal and physical abuse directed at those carrying out essential maintenance works on the highway. You should ensure that your authority is taking steps to look after the wellbeing of those working on your networks, as well as planning and coordinating as far as possible the works that are taking place.

If you have any comments or questions on any of the above, please contact the Local Highways and Active Travel policy team at roadmaintenance@dft.gov.uk.

Yours sincerely,

[SIGNED]

Emma Ward CBE,
Director General, Roads Transport Group, Department for Transport