England's council road maintenance spending hits record £4.9bn

Council road maintenance spending in England has hit a record £4.9bn, up £800m in two years, and 94% of councils will now carry out preventative maintenance this year, according to new Government figures. Last year the figure was 76%. Someone, somewhere, has finally read the manual on potholes.

The Department for Transport said council transparency reports showed a growing focus on tackling deterioration before potholes form, rather than returning to patch the same stretches again and again. It's an old idea whose time has, on paper, arrived.

What does the record spend buy?

Nearly 7,000 miles of roads are due to be resurfaced this year, more than 10% up on last year. Ministers have also released £220m of incentive funding to councils across England after authorities met performance targets. Further cash follows later this year — but only if they keep hitting those targets.

The government credits its £7.3bn road maintenance funding programme, backed by stricter monitoring, for driving the shift. Carrots, sticks, and a fairly large scoreboard.

Who checks the councils?

The DfT's local highway authority ratings for 2025/26 grade every authority green, amber or red across three scorecards: road condition, spend, and wider best practice. The national tally: 16 green, 125 amber, 13 red. Amber, it seems, is England's favourite colour.

The standouts:

• Rotherham, Portsmouth and West Berkshire score the top overall rating, with Portsmouth and West Berkshire green across all three scorecards.
• Bedford, Bolton, Leicestershire, North Lincolnshire, Slough and Suffolk all rate red overall, dragged down by red spend scorecards.
• Waltham Forest and West Northamptonshire rate red overall, with Waltham Forest red on condition, spend and best practice.
• Greenwich rates red overall, with red on spend and best practice.
• Cumberland, Kensington and Chelsea and Westmorland and Furness rate red despite amber scorecards elsewhere.
• Birmingham and Sheffield carry no spend rating; the Isle of Wight has no spend rating either.

Big-city performance is middling. Manchester, Leeds, Wigan and Wolverhampton's neighbours in the West Midlands mostly sit at amber, though Manchester rates green overall. London boroughs scatter across the spectrum — Westminster amber, Kensington and Chelsea red, Lewisham and Hillingdon green.

What did ministers and the RAC say?

Transport secretary Heidi Alexander said: "While we know there is much more to do, our record funding, combined with tough new rules holding councils to account, mean that drivers are making smoother journeys while giving people roads they can rely on."

RAC head of policy Simon Williams welcomed the change. He said: "This data is encouraging. It's good to see so many miles of road being resurfaced, but it's also positive that the preventative maintenance message has got through as we've long argued that councils need to take steps to stop potholes appearing in the first place, and not just patch them up. Surface dressing, if done properly, is a very cost effective way of improving more roads for the long term."

Even the RAC is pleased. That doesn't happen often.

Councils now face further performance checks before the next tranche of incentive funding is released, which means the 13 red-rated authorities have a year — and a few thousand miles of tarmac — to work with.