§ Mr. Forthasked the Secretary of State for Transport when he will publish the results of the national road maintenance condition survey for 1986; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. Peter BottomleyI am today publishing the report of the survey. A copy has been placed in the Library. The survey is one in an annual series sponsored jointly by the Department and local authority associations. It involves a sample survey of defects in all classes of road other than motorways.
The results of the survey indicate that, while conditions remain worse than when the survey started in 1977, recent deterioration has been concentrated on minor roads. In the case of trunk roads, for which the Department is responsible and which have been carrying a substantially increased volume of heavy goods vehicles, the previous trend of deterioration appears to have been halted. In the case of rural principal and classified roads, conditions are substantially what they were in 1977 when surveys started. There has been a significant deterioration since that year in the condition of urban principal roads. The condition of urban classified roads appears to be stable.
The Government have already committed themselves to a programme of works to catch up on the backlog of maintenance on national roads. Priority has been given to motorways (not covered by the survey) where the annual rate of renewal has doubled since 1979. In the current financial year we have also stepped up renewal of other trunk roads. It is too early for this to be fully reflected in survey results. We aim to eliminate the backlog of repairs on the trunk roads system as a whole by 1992.
In the case of local roads, we have increased provision for expenditure on maintenance by 13 per cent. for 1987–88, continuing a run of increases well above the rate of inflation. It is for local authorities to determine the priorities for spending the funds made available. We hope that they will give a proper priority to road maintenance.
With the funds available at national and local levels and the measures we are taking to secure efficient use of resources at both levels there is a good prospect in the next four to five years of eliminating the effects of past neglect and securing high standards of maintenance on the network as a whole.