Transport Insights

It might have been expected that the government would use so-called transparency reports on local authority highways maintenance for spin purposes but today’s announcement from the Department for Transport (DfT) today breaks all (non-existent) records for the cherry-picking of data.

In fact, almost all the data in the announcement seems to duplicate existing official data.

The story behind the headline

Extra £220 million released for pothole repairs as figures show record road maintenance spend by councils

is that councils have so far qualified for less than half of the extra £525m of incentive funding that is in theory available for the current year.

The DfT also says:

Further funding will be released later in the year only if councils reach their performance targets, and can be withheld if they fail to reach them as part of the government’s efforts to hold councils to account.

But, as I have discussed, there are no real performance targets, just good practice reporting requirements – and the good practice is *not* filling in potholes!

In fact, as it says here:

Eligible local authorities that met the requirement to publish a transparency report in-line with the timescales set out in April 2026 will receive 50% of their total incentive funding in their quarterly payment in October 2026.

This is the first of four requirements set out here; none of the others are about performance targets.

With the incentive cash likely to be below the promised £525m – as was always a risk – the DfT is focusing on what councils are spending, mainly using their own money.

data also shows that councils are starting to properly invest in their roads with £4.9 billion total being spent this year, £800 million more than before this government came to power.

But the figure is of course a projection and the DfT’s Local highway maintenance transparency reports 2026 webpage notes that the figures used to show an increase – £4.1bn in 2024-25 and £4.4bn in 2025-26 are

different from DfT’s official statistics for maintenance expenditure, which showed £5.0 billion local highway maintenance expenditure for the financial year ending March 2025.

And that:

DfT’s official statistics on maintenance expenditure for the financial year ending March 2026 will be published in December 2026 and will not include projections for the year ending March 2027.

So most of the new data is both unnecessary and unreliable, as well as probably not being adjusted for inflation, as the official figures are.

There is also a dodgy claim that:

nearly 7,000 miles of road resurfacing taking place this year, up 10% on last year

Firstly, this is another projection and – given that the new “performance targets” were in place last year – it doesn’t suggest that the new regime has improved things.

Secondly, the “resurfacing” includes nearly 2,000 miles of planned structural maintenance and nearly 5,000 miles of preventative maintenance, with 94% of councils projected to do the latter, as opposed to 76% last year.

Preventative maintenance such as surface dressing is a good thing, but it isn’t resurfacing. It is also a lot cheaper per mile than actual resurfacing so you are going to get more for your money.

Interestingly, the DfT has not published the equivalent figures for 2025-26, although they are in the official road condition data published last week.

Neither has it published the projected percentage of potholes filled by reactive repair using permanent methods vs the projected percentage filled by reactive repair using temporary methods for the current year.

Cherry picking is too kind a phase for this kind of statistical sleight of hand.

Interestingly, as I write this, the media don’t seem particularly interested in the non-story.