Highway maintenance on England's principal roads – best value?

Abstract

Local authorities are under pressure to deliver cost-effective, sustainable highway maintenance, which meets the needs of all road users. This paper investigates whether the best value performance indicator for principal roads in England is assisting in provision of ‘best value’ to all stakeholders. Most local authorities who took part in research carried out by the author are dissatisfied with their highway maintenance budget allocation. In addition, a significant proportion of authorities are prepared to carry out surface treatment (resurfacing) as opposed to deeper treatments (structural maintenance), even though this may result in roads being treated more frequently. The main recommendations from the study are that local authorities should carry out network condition surveys in accordance with current guidelines, to obtain the best possible information regarding the condition of their road network. Also, authorities should consider applying thinner treatments to their road networks to spread maintenance budgets ‘as far as possible’. It is, however, noted that such treatments will not be appropriate in all situations. Fewer annual changes to the indicator (BVPI 223 until financial year 2007/08) should also prove beneficial in terms of consistency of the annual values calculated.