Investing in better roads for the long term

07 August 2026

When residents contact us about the condition of their local roads, the conversation often begins and ends with potholes. That's understandable, potholes are visible, frustrating and can present a risk to road users.

But if we are serious about improving our roads for the long term, we need to move from a pothole culture to a prevention culture.

We’re placing a strong focus on planned, preventative maintenance across our highway network. By carrying out repairs at the right time, we can extend the life of roads, reduce the likelihood of more serious defects developing and make better use of the funding available to us.

Put simply, it’s far more effective to preserve a road in reasonable condition than to wait until it has failed and requires much more extensive work.

I'm pleased that we are making good progress with our scheduled maintenance programme. During the year from May 2025, our teams had resurfaced around 106,600 metres squared more than double the same period the previous year. During the same year we saw a 42 per cent increase in reports of potholes.

Effective road repairs might not always attract the same attention as responding to individual defects, but it is the approach that delivers the greatest benefit for the network as a whole and provides the best value for taxpayers.

That said, I want to be realistic about the challenges we face. As we move towards autumn and winter, there will inevitably be periods when weather conditions put additional pressure on our roads.

We are hopeful that the work carried out this year will help minimise some of the issues experienced last winter, but no highway authority can entirely prevent defects from appearing, particularly during prolonged spells of wet and freezing weather

Like all councils across the country, we have to make difficult decisions about how we prioritise the resources available to us. Our focus must always be on addressing safety-critical issues and maintaining the routes that carry the highest volumes of traffic, including key roads that keep communities, businesses and public services connected.

This means there will still be roads that residents feel are in poor condition or uncomfortable to drive on. In some cases, roads might look worn or unsightly but they just aren’t as much of a priority as others we need to fix. This is particularly true on some lower-use and unclassified roads, where we must carefully balance need, risk and available funding across the wider network.

The wider challenge is one faced not just here, but across the country. Highway maintenance has been chronically underfunded for many years, resulting in a backlog of repairs that has built up over time. To bring every road across our network up to the standard that residents would ideally like to see would require investment measured not in millions but in hundreds of millions of pounds — around £300 million by current estimates.

Even if that level of funding were suddenly available, the solution would not be straightforward. Delivering that volume of work would require huge numbers of skilled staff, specialist machinery and materials, all of which are in high demand. Attempting to undertake everything at once would also mean significant disruption across the area as roadworks became a feature of daily life on an unprecedented scale.

So while there is no single quick fix, there is a sensible path forward. By continuing to prioritise preventative maintenance, targeting investment where it will have the greatest impact and focusing on long-term asset management rather than short-term reactions, we can make steady and sustainable improvements to our roads.

It may not always be as visible as filling a pothole, but preventing roads from failing in the first place is ultimately the most effective way to deliver the road network residents deserve.

Cllr Richard Butler, Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport