§ Ms WalleyTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions if local transport plan funding in 2002–03 will include funding for street lighting. [16079]
§ Ms KeebleThe Government are committed in the 10-year Plan for Transport to tackling the maintenance backlog for local authority roads, bridges and street lighting. Over £30 billion is being provided for local road maintenance over the next 10 years, an extra £9 billion (27 per cent. in real terms) above the funding levels in the previous 10 years. Capital expenditure on maintenance, which is used to tackle deterioration, will increase by nearly £7 billion over the 10 years.
Funding for the maintenance and renewal of street lighting is currently made through the Highways Maintenance Standard Spending Assessment element of Revenue Support Grant. No specific provision has been made in the 2002–03 capital maintenance settlement for renewal of street lighting. The first priority in the 10-Year Plan is to halt the deterioration in carriageways and footways and to continue the bridge strengthening programme. Additional provision for street lighting renewal may be made through the LTP system in later years. For the present, authorities have discretion over the funding provided for maintenance and smaller integrated transport schemes and may use this to fund capital works on street lighting where this is a local priority.
DTLR is aware that street lighting columns in a number of authorities are failing structurally, but does not have sufficient information to determine the number of columns that are unsafe. Local authorities have agreed with DTLR that a national condition survey for street lighting should be introduced, and that information from this should be used to compile a national inventory. In future years the inventory could be used to target funding for tackling the street lighting backlog.