Road maintenance funding
Where does the funding come from and what is it spent on?
This page explains how road maintenance is funded and why we have to prioritise certain repairs.
Funding for highway maintenance comes from Council tax, business rates and Government grants. Each year councillors weigh priorities and agree two spending plans for the council. These are the revenue budget and the capital programme. They both include funding for maintaining the highway.
Revenue funding
This usually comes from council tax and business rates. This is approximately £40 per household or business a year.
We use this funding on day-to-day reactive maintenance work to keep the highway safe including:
- Highway Asset Inspections – Carrying out regular inspections of highway assets to identify defects (e.g. potholes) and other issues. ‘Highway Assets’ is the term we use for all parts of the highway that we look after so this includes everything from roads and pavements to bollards and traffic lights.
- Drainage Maintenance – Routine cleaning and maintenance of the highway drainage system.
- Control of Vegetation – Routine verge cutting, hedge cutting and weed control.
- Road Markings – Maintenance of all centre lines, junction markings and other lines.
- Winter Service – Gritting, provision of grit bins, snow clearance, weather prediction etc.
- Structures – Routine and general maintenance of bridges, culverts, subways and retaining walls to prevent deterioration and keep them safe.
- Street Lighting and Intelligent Transport Systems – Inspecting, managing and maintaining systems including streetlights, illuminated bollards.
- Traffic Signals - Inspecting, managing and maintaining systems including traffic lights and pedestrian crossings.
- Reactive and Emergency Response – 24/7 service to repair defects causing a danger to users e.g. potholes. Also responding to other emergencies that compromise the safety or operation of the highway network e.g. an oil spill, flooding, storm events, etc.
- Network Management - Minimising disruption to the highway network by coordinating roadworks, road closures, traffic orders, lane rental etc. Also through licensing items such as skips, dropped kerbs, furniture etc. and dealing with any unlawful obstructions.
- Third Party Claims – Handling red and green claims. Red Claims are claims against the Council from third parties. E.g. someone claiming for compensation if they have hit a pothole and damaged their car. Green Claims are claims we make against others for damage to the highway network e.g. if a lorry driver reversed into a streetlight.
Capital funding
The Department for Transport (DfT) gives capital grants to local highway authorities for highway maintenance. This funding is allocated using a needs-based formula, considering the highway assets each authority manages. In the past the Council has borrowed additional capital funding.
Capital funding is used to improve the highway and reduce the cost of maintenance in the long term. It can usually only be used for certain types of preventative maintenance work that extend the life of roads. This includes:
- Protection e.g. Sealing the surface of the highway and protecting it from damage caused by water and UV light.
- Intervention maintenance e.g. Resurfacing a road if the surface of the road has deteriorated beyond preventative treatments but the base below is still in good condition.
- Structural maintenance if there are underlying issues e.g. Re-laying the ‘foundations’ of a road.
- Improvement works to change a specific characteristic to improve safety or to prevent damage e.g. Adding skid resistant surfacing or improving drainage to prevent damage to the road because of flooding.
Note, the Government sometimes specifies that their capital grants can be used on reactive work such as repairing potholes or on preventative work to prevent potholes forming in the first place.
You can find more information about our spending in our latest Transparency Report.
DfT Structures Fund
The Council has applied for additional funding from the Department for Transport Structures Fund. Further information is available on the Structures Fund page.
