Transport Insights

With Rachel Reeves under fire for her pre-Budget spin, it’s worth another look at how misleading her claims were about the post-Budget announcement of local highways maintenance funding for the last four years of the Parliament.

The unfortunate thing is, Labour is (for now) giving councils the funding boost and medium-term certainty they need, but mangling the message.

There is a significant – and positive – emphasis on councils doing preventative treatments, which takes the emphasis away from filling potholes in the short term but should mean there are fewer to fill later on.

This may explain why, as I have said, Reeves again misstated the Labour manifesto pledge to fix a million extra potholes for every year of the Parliament, now only talking about doing so by the end of the period.

But (according to the Treasury press release) she also said:

We are doubling the funding promised by the previous government

This is, I am afraid to say, doubly misleading, as the small print in the press release explains that it compares:

£1.067bn funding allocated by the previous Government for FY2024/25, to £2.134bn funding allocated by this Government for FY2029/30

So, firstly, it isn’t money promised by the Tories but actually allocated.

And this confirms that the claim is based on two years that are five years apart and therefore subject to inflation.

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has published Regulatory guidance on intelligent transparency, which states:

(more…)

Ministers have announced £7.3bn capital funding for local highway maintenance in England between 2026-27 and 2029-30, keeping the £500m annual “uplift” , now badged as “incentive funding”, with councils required to jump through as yet undefined hoops to get three quarters of the extra cash.

As I reported, the Budget deliberately held back details of this cash to allow a new announcement, stating at the time only that there would be “over £2 billion” in 2029-30.

The cash will gradually ramp up, from £1,617m next year to £2,134m with the largest increase around a quarter of a billion pounds coming in the final year.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said that “as the case in 2025 to 2026, a portion of this funding will be designated as incentive funding”. This ranges from £525m next year to £540m.

This funding will be subject to local highway authorities demonstrating that they comply with best practice in highways maintenance, for example, by spending all the Department for Transport’s capital grant on highways maintenance and adopting more preventative maintenance.

The DfT said that at least 25% of the extra cash will be dependent on local highway authorities publishing transparency reports. Rather confusingly, it said all incentive funding will be withheld if reports are not published. 

The DfT said that in 2026-27, (a further) 50% of the incentive funding will be subject to local highways authorities’ performance.

Of course they don’t know how it will work yet:

(more…)

The Treasury has insisted that the Labour government remains committed to fixing an extra million potholes across England in each year of the Parliament, despite some very contradictory language in yesterday’s Budget document.

And it looks as if funding for local authority highway maintenance may be restored to this year’s level to do this, with a funding announcement deliberately held back to get new headlines.

Yesterday I noted that the Treasury’s official Budget document had redefined Labour’s manifesto commitment as “to fix an additional 1 million potholes per year by the end of the Parliament”, rather than every year along the way

However, a Treasury spokesperson has told me that the “every year” commitment remains intact.

I also noted, correctly, that none of the Budget documents had stated what funding would be for the years between now and 2029-30, when the commitment is over £2bn annually.

This year’s funding is around £1.6bn, which is said to include an “uplift” of £500m on base funding of £500m.

(more…)

It looks as if Rachel Reeves has dropped the £500m “uplift” for local road maintenance (in England) and Labour appears to have ditched its manifesto pledge to “additional one million potholes across England in each year of the next parliament”.

Here is what Labour’s manifesto said:

We will fix an additional one million potholes across England in each year of the next parliament

Here is what the Budget document says:

By 2029-30, the government will commit over £2 billion annually for local authorities to repair, renew and fix potholes on their roads – doubling funding since coming into office. This record level of funding will enable the government to exceed its manifesto commitment to fix an additional 1 million potholes per year by the end of the Parliament.

So the extra million potholes a year have been put back from every year of the Parliament to the last year of the Parliament, i.e. 2029-30.

Despite promises of long-term funding settlements, the Budget document does not appear to give a total funding figure for 2026-27 or any year between now and 2029-30.

And the extra £500m that went into 2025-26 allocations with great fanfare in last year’s Budget is not trumpeted today, suggesting that it has gone.

The “doubling” claim  is dubious as it does not take five years’ worth of inflation into account but concentration on 2029-30 suggests that the next few years will be bleak.

The Budget document also states:

The implementation of eVED will provide revenues for this new higher level of roads maintenance funding to be continued for the long term.

The focus on what happens at the end of the parliament reliance on eVED, which begins in 2028, again supports the idea that money will be tight in the meantime.

The Department for Transport’s Capital Departmental Expenditure Limit (DEL) wobbles around for the next four years from about £23bn to a bit over £24bn but it’s impossible within that to pick out highway maintenance funding.