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The government is committed to tackling the poor state of our roads. This financial year, we have provided an additional £500 million for local highways maintenance and have at the Autumn Budget, confirmed a record investment of £7.3 billion for the next four years, covering the period of 2026 and 2027 to 2029 and 2030. This funding increase and the provision of long-term funding certainty are designed to enable local authorities to invest in significantly improving the long-term condition of England’s roads and local highways network, delivering safer and more reliable journeys.
To ensure increases in funding drive improvements, we now require local highway authorities to publish transparency reports setting out their maintenance plans. These reports allow residents and taxpayers to see how funding is being used and help us monitor progress. The first reports were published in June 2025.
Based on our assessments of these reports, my department yesterday published red, amber, green (RAG) ratings for each local highway authority, assessing the quality of local roads and progress against key aspects of local highways management. These overall ratings are supported by 3 underlying scorecards, measuring local road condition, the level of capital spend on highways maintenance and the extent to which local authorities have adopted best practice in highways management.
