Statement following the Chancellor’s Spending Review Statement

It was good hear the Chancellor acknowledge the importance of infrastructure investment in his statement today and we hope that funding for local roads is prioritised by the Government when more details are shared later this Autumn.

Every journey starts or ends on a local road and they make up 98% of the road network. We rely on them every day for the distribution of goods and services and to get to work, school and hospital appointments, but our Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance Survey (ALARM) 2019 reported that the backlog of repairs is now £9.8 billion.

A long-term approach is needed to support this vital part of our infrastructure – a view supported by the Transport Select Committee’s (TSC) recent report on local roads funding and maintenance. We believe that an extra £1.5 billion per year, for 10 years, is needed to bring road conditions up to a level from which they can be maintained cost effectively going forward.