The chair of the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) has broadly welcomed UK government plans to improve English roads.
The government announced the RIS3 package on March 26, which commits £27bn over five years to upgrade and future-proof England’s road network.
David Giles, chair of the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA), commented on the plans: “The Government’s commitment to another five-year funding package for the strategic road network (SRN) is great news for users of England’s motorways and major A roads.
“RIS3 continues to provide National Highways, which manages the SRN, with sustained and targeted investment supported by a long-term funding horizon, allowing it to implement a planned, proactive approach to the maintenance of this infrastructure – exactly what we’ve been calling for for local roads.
“In her Ministerial Foreword, Secretary of State for Transport, the Rt Hon Heidi Alexander MP, said: ‘By investing in the SRN, we will reduce regional inequalities, ensuring that all parts of the UK benefit from free running, safer and more reliable road travel.’ I think most road users would agree that achieving the same ambition on our local road network – which makes up more than 97% of roads in England – is a very, very long way off.
“RIS3 sets out a target of maintaining the SRN so that at least 96.2% is in good condition; a target that National Highways is able to meet, in part, due to structure of its funding. In contrast our recent Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey reported that only 52% of local roads in England are in good structural condition – the legacy of decades of underfunding and short-term cash injections.”
Giles said that the government’s pledge to allocate £7.3bn over the next four years to local roads is an important step forward. However, he added that it will be some time before the impact of increased funding levels, if fully delivered, will be noticed by the public. He said the dial could be moved quicker if the government’s commitment to additional funding was frontloaded, rather than ramping up in the years to 2030.
“This would support a shift away from the seemingly endless cycle of pothole patch and repair and allow local authority highway teams to deliver necessary resurfacing and proactive programmes that prevent potholes forming in the first place to improve the experience of all road users,” Giles said.
The Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) is a partnership between the Mineral Products Association (MPA) and Eurobitume. The AIA says it draws on the knowledge and experience of both organisations to increase awareness of the asphalt industry and to promote the uses and benefits of asphalt to specifiers, policymakers and the general public.
