London (Parliament Politics Magazine) – The number of UK drivers upset with the state of local roads has hit record levels, according to the RAC, as the administration faces pressure to improve the country’s battered infrastructure.
What are the main concerns of UK drivers about local roads?
The motoring body insisted the government provide more budget for councils to fix the state of local roads after it discovered that 56% of the 2,700 drivers surveyed put the poor situation of council-maintained roads as their top concern. This was a 21 percentage point increase on the survey than concerns over the price of insuring a vehicle, which was second on the list.
How has driver dissatisfaction with road conditions changed recently?
The report arrives amid growing concern over the state of Britain’s pothole-ridden streets after years of underinvestment. Councils, responsible for handling 98% of all roads, had central government funding for local services slashed by 40% in real terms between 2010 and 2020. This year, a statement by the Asphalt Industry Alliance, an industry body, calculated that it would cost more than £16bn to fix the backlog of road repairs, up from £14bn last year.
What impact has underinvestment had on the state of local roads?
The RAC indicated that 73% of those surveyed believed local roads were in a poorer state than a year before, up from 67% last year. Separate RAC data discovered that its operatives had treated more than 25,000 pothole-related breakdowns in the past 12 months.
The RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, stated: “It is great that, on average, drivers we surveyed are far more concerned about the condition of their local roads this year than they are about either the expense of motor insurance – which has been soaring in recent years – or the cost of fuel which is still at an uncomfortably elevated level. “If this doesn’t underline the seriousness of the situation we now find ourselves in, we’re not sure what does.”
Last year, the prior Conservative government committed to spend £8.3bn on repairing local roads and resurfacing 5,000 miles of local carriageways. It stated the money would come from savings it had made from dumping the northern leg of the HS2 rail line between Birmingham and Manchester.
How does the current government’s road repair funding compare to previous promises?
Labour promised during the election campaign to give councils an extra £64m a year to designate an additional 1m potholes annually. However, the latest government has faced criticism for pushing cuts to infrastructure funding a month into Keir Starmer’s premiership, amid worries over the public finances.
Williams stated: “The new government simply must do something differently. Without a promise of far more funds for councils – something we will push hard for ahead of the autumn budget – its options are extremely limited. Put bluntly, the less we spend as a nation on our roads now, the more it will cost us in the future.”