Further to my post last week about the Department for Transport (DfT) spinning the so-called transparency reports on local authority highways maintenance, I have unpicked a bit more about what has – and hasn’t – happened.
As I wrote, the headline
Extra £220 million released for pothole repairs as figures show record road maintenance spend by councils
Is not about new money but councils qualifying for less than half of the extra £525m of incentive funding that is in theory available for the current year.
In fact, the DfT has clarified that
all eligible councils met the requirement needed to unlock their full incentive payment for this quarter, because they have published a transparency report. This means these councils will receive £220 million in incentive payments this quarter.
The confusing part is that only £440m of the £525m is genuinely “incentive funding”.
As it says here, mayoral strategic authorities received
all highway maintenance funding in full via their integrated settlement in April 2026.
Albeit that:
It is expected that all local highway authorities participate in the transparency reporting for the full 4-year period, regardless of incentive.
In fact, Birmingham City Council, which operates 1% of local authority roads in England but is part of the West Midlands Combined Authority, did not publish a report.
As for the claim that:
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.
As I have pointed out, the “performance targets”, are in fact good practice reporting requirements, set out here, plus
Spending at least the value of DfT’s highways maintenance funding on highways maintenance, ensuring this is the case in all, not just most, local highway authorities.
The spin doctors love that word “ensuring”, don’t they? But how do you ensure that everyone complies based on an expectation that everyone will comply?
Ironically, the DfT has pointed out that
Figures from local councils … shows (sic) that councils are starting to properly invest in their roads with £4.9 billion total being spent this year…
Meaning that they are due to spend three times the value of DfT’s highways maintenance funding on highways maintenance.
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