185 years of funding, over £1.5bn needed to bring Derbyshire’s roads up to standard

It would take 185 years of funding – in excess of £1.5 billion – to bring Derbyshire’s roads up to standard, a meeting has been told.

A Derbyshire County Council scrutiny meeting today (July 23rd) was told that the authority’s highways department was previously “not fit for purpose” and had “got it wrong” in terms of the proportion of spending on long-term wholesale fixes versus short-term reactive repairs.

Chris Henning, the council’s executive director for place – which includes highways – detailed that the authority “would need circa £1.5 billion to bring our carriageways across the county up to standard – over 185 years on current investment levels”.

The county council is responsible for 3,361 miles of roads, 276 miles of cycle ways, 1,234 highway bridges and 90,200 street lights, with its road network “assets” valued at £8 billion.

It has a capital investment budget of £40 million, up from £17 million, but rising to £70 million through new funding.

Meanwhile, its annual revenue is said to be £19 million.

The authority says it repairs around 60,000 potholes a year – depending on weather – resurfacing 6,000 square metres of roads per month on average and 12 staff handle 70,000 highways enquiries annually.

Katherine Hunt, the council’s assistant director of highways delivery, said: “We don’t have the money, unfortunately, to repair every defect.”

She said out of the £19 million revenue budget for highways £4.3 million was for reactive maintenance. 

Mr Henning said: “The larger-scale proactive work you can do, the better – it is better value for money.

“We got the balance wrong previously. Almost the same amount of money was being spent on capital versus reactive maintenance. Now there is a large difference between the two and we can do more with it. The list of projects is endless but we need funding.”

Asked about delays for road repairs, Mr Henning said: “We have got 12 inspectors for 70,000 enquiries. If you raise an issue I can’t say we will be on it in a day.

“If you call us and tell us there is a sinkhole we will have someone out there to put cones around it within a number of hours.

“There are times where the delay has gone on so long it has become embarrassing, say six months for an overgrown tree or a dirty sign, and we recognise that there is plenty we need to do.

“We have to do better with the resources we have or our residents will be continuously disappointed with the services they get.

“We are a much better highways service than we were two or three years ago and we will be better in two more years.

“It is now fit for purpose and it wasn’t four years ago.”

Ms Hunt said artificial intelligence (AI) was “not used yet” in the highways department but said “there are operational uses of AI which can possibly deliver efficiencies in some areas”.

Mr Henning said: “There is talk of sticking cameras on the bottom of our vehicles which then analyse the road quality and relaying it for future maintenance programmes.

“The highways service is not yet in a state of maturity that we can handle all these terabytes of data. 

“That will be part of our improvement in the medium to long-term.”

Earlier this month, the council’s Reform UK cabinet was told that Derbyshire was getting significantly more money to help repair potholes and some larger road projects but it now faced the reality of its lack of ability and capacity to carry out the work.

The council’s highways department will have to lean even more significantly on private contractors and companies to help deliver road projects, due to the rapid surge in spending, cabinet was told, with a real risk that schemes cannot be delivered on time and risk losing funding.