The number of UK drivers concerned with the state of local roads has hit record levels, according to the RAC, as the government faces pressure to fix the country’s battered infrastructure.
The motoring body urged the government to provide more funding for councils to fix the state of local roads after it found 56% of the 2,700 drivers surveyed put the poor condition of council-maintained roads as their top concern.
This was 21 percentage points higher on the survey than concerns over the cost of insuring a vehicle, which was second on the list.
The report comes amid growing concern over the state of Britain’s pothole-ridden roads after years of underinvestment. Councils, responsible for managing 98% of all roads, had central government funding for local services cut by 40% in real terms between 2010 and 2020. This year, a report by the Asphalt Industry Alliance, an industry body, estimated that it would cost more than £16bn to fix the backlog of road repairs, up from £14bn last year.
The RAC revealed that 73% of those surveyed believed local roads were in a worse state than a year before, up from 67% last year. Separate RAC data found that its operatives had attended more than 25,000 pothole-related breakdowns in the past 12 months.
The RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, said: “It is absolutely remarkable that, on average, drivers we surveyed are far more concerned about the state of their local roads this year than they are about either the cost of motor insurance – which has been rocketing in recent years – or the cost of fuel which is still at an uncomfortably high level.
“If this doesn’t underline the seriousness of the situation we now find ourselves in, we’re not sure what does.”
Last year, the previous Conservative government pledged to spend £8.3bn on repairing local roads and resurfacing 5,000 miles of local carriageways. It said the money would come from savings it had made from scrapping the northern leg of the HS2 rail line between Birmingham and Manchester.
Labour pledged during the election campaign to give councils an extra £64m a year to fix an additional 1m potholes annually. However, the new government has faced criticism for making cuts to infrastructure funding a month into Keir Starmer’s premiership, amid concerns over the public finances.
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Williams said: “The new government simply must do something differently. Without a promise of far more funds for councils – something we will push hard for ahead of the autumn budget – its options are extremely limited. Put bluntly, the less we spend as a nation on our roads now, the more it will cost us in the future.”
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “Rebuilding Britain means modernising our transport infrastructure, and we are absolutely committed to tackling the poor state of our local roads. We will maintain and renew the network, including supporting local authorities to fix up to 1m more potholes a year, to ensure our roads serve users, are safe, and tackle congestion.”
