Release £8.3bn HS2 money for potholes now, DfT urges Treasury

The vast majority of the money isn’t available to spend until the end of the decade. Only £300 million for the first two years has so far been allocated.

Ben Clatworthy www.thetimes.co.uk

HS2 money that was redirected to fix potholes should be made available sooner to fix crumbling roads, officials have said.

Ministers have pledged to resurface 5,000 miles of road using £8.3 billion of cash that would have been spent on the new HS2 line north of Birmingham.

However, the vast majority of the money isn’t available to spend until the end of the decade. Only £300 million for the first two years has so far been allocated.

The Times understands that the Department for Transport (DfT) is urging officials at the Treasury to unlock the funds earlier, allowing work to begin sooner. At present the money will be spent over an 11-year period.

“If we were going to go by the letter of HS2 funding, that means all of our funding comes towards the back end of the decade,” a DfT official said. “We don’t think that’s a particularly helpful way of doing things. We’ve had a conversation with the Treasury over what that looks like.”

Last month, an annual report into the state of the carriageways said that local roads are heading to “breaking point”, with less than half of the network now deemed to be in a good condition.

More than 100,000 miles of road, representing more than half the network, have less than 15 years’ structural life remaining, according to the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA), which collects data from local authorities.

It said the continued decline in conditions is “reflected by the cost of tackling the backlog of carriageway repairs, which has increased to a new record high of £16.3 billion”. A one-time catch-up would take ten years to complete.

After weeks of speculation over the soaring costs of the scheme, Rishi Sunak announced in October at the Tory party conference in Manchester that the northern leg of HS2 would be axed.

The decision was criticised by leaders in the north of England, including Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, and Andy Street, the mayor of the West Midlands.

Sunak insisted that the £36 billion saved by not building phases 2a and 2b of the high-speed line would be injected into more than a hundred transport schemes across the UK as part of a new Network North programme.

Announcing in November the £8.3 billion for roads, Mark Harper, the transport secretary, said: “Today’s biggest-ever funding uplift for local road improvements is a victory for all road users, who will enjoy smoother, faster and safer trips as we use redirected HS2 funding to make the right long-term decisions for a brighter future.”

Local highway authorities were given an extra £150 million last year. They will receive a further £150 million this year, with the rest of the funding allocated through to 2034.

A source close to Harper said the DfT and Treasury discussions formed part of the “usual dialogue of government”, adding: “We have already paid the first tranche of money into local authorities’ bank accounts and work is under way.

“It’s absolutely usual for us to be talking to the Treasury, especially about such a large amount of money. These are normal conversations.”

The AIA report found that across England and Wales, local authorities would need an extra £1.22 billion each year to maintain road networks to their own targets. It amounts to £7.2 million per authority.

Rick Green, the AIA chairman, said the extra Network North money was welcome but is “clearly not going to be enough to halt the decline” in the quality of local roads.

A spokeswoman for the DfT said: “Local highway authorities are responsible for maintaining their road networks but we are supporting them with the biggest-ever increase in funding, with £8.3 billion of reallocated HS2 funding over the next ten years — enough to resurface the equivalent of over 5,000 miles of roads across the country.

“As is the usual process, we will provide further detail on future years’ funding in due course.”