Ministers vow to spend record £8.4bn on road maintenance in England

Ministers have pledged to spend record amounts on road maintenance as part of a £27bn five-year investment plan for England’s major roads and motorways.The government said it was aiming to “fix the foundations” with almost a third, £8.4bn, of the spending going on maintenance, including resurfacing a quarter of England’s strategic road network.However, campaigners said the plan – the government’s third road investment strategy, known as RIS3 – was still building needless new roads, with funding approved for 16 schemes.That includes £1.65bn of initial public funding for the Lower Thames Crossing. The government hopes that the project, Britain’s biggest planned road building scheme for many years, will be largely privately funded but has yet to announce backers. It is intended to ease congestion in the south-east, especially for freight from the Channel ports travelling north of London.The strategy also confirms funding for the long-debated dualling of the A66 between Cumbria and North Yorkshire, which was briefly put on hold by Labour in 2024 after being championed by the former prime minister Rishi Sunak.The transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, said: “For too long this country has failed to tackle and fix our crumbling infrastructure, but this huge £27bn investment in our roads will secure the future of our road network for years to come.“Not only are we investing in renewing our roads, meaning smoother and faster journeys for drivers, we are getting on with investing into brand new projects and fixing potholes, which will deliver benefits across the country from Norwich to Manchester.”The Department for Transport said the £8.4bn for A-roads and motorways was on top of the £7.3bn pledged in the spending review for local authorities to fix potholes and maintain local roads.It said the 16 funded schemes had been chosen as best value for money and deliverability, on projects that would “deliver growth for left-behind communities”.However, campaigners from the Transport Action Network said that outdated traffic forecasts meant poor value road schemes were included in the plan, such as new junctions for the A38 in Derby as well as the A66 dualling, that were “more likely to increase congestion than solve it”.Chris Todd, TAN’s director, said: “In the 21st century we really should be doing something better than building bigger roads in urban areas.”He described a new target for road safety – to reduce people killed and seriously injured by 7.5% by 2031 as “woefully unambitious”, adding: “Previously, National Highways had an ambition of reaching zero harm on its network by 2040. At this rate of improvement this won’t be achieved until after 2090, some 50 years later.”