The Department for Transport has asked all local highway authorities that are not in Mayoral Combined Authority areas to publish prominently on their websites a plan for the additional resurfacing and other highways maintenance work they will deliver with the new 2023/24 and 2024/25 funding unlocked from the Network North Plan.
How much was awarded?
Stoke-on-Trent City Council has received a funding allocation of just over £22 million to run between 2023/2024 and 2033/2034 including a funding uplift of £378,000 in both financial years 2023/24 and 2024/25.
How was / will it be used?
The city council’s highway is the largest, most valuable and most widely used physical asset that the council maintains and like any physical asset, the highway network requires maintenance to manage deterioration.
The city council uses sound asset management principles and takes a long-term view of how assets are managed and ensures that the limited available funds are spent on activities that optimise the utility of the asset over time. We will continue to build on our understanding of the type, volume, and condition of our highway Infrastructure and will continue to adopt the principles of asset management and continuous efficiency that have achieved the highest level of incentive funding from central government, awarded to those authorities that can demonstrate value for money and efficient delivery of highway maintenance activities.
By employing this approach, we will continue to increase the value achieved in road maintenance, improving network resilience and reducing the burden on revenue budgets through the delivery of effective programmes of preventative maintenance now and in the future.
Following an asset management approach, the additional funding has been combined with other funding used to maintain the highway including other Department for Transport funding and the city council’s Highway Maintenance Capital Programme.
Future areas of innovation
The service is committed to continuous improvement and use of new technologies.
The Highways Service are currently investigating asphalt production and waste recycling; waste to energy reinvestment opportunities; the viability of crowdsourcing highway asset and condition data using AI technology; greater uses of agile technology in traffic management and increasing sustainability through carbon reduction activities
Use of streetworks
The city council is a street permitting authority and is committed to balancing the needs to keep the traffic moving with the needs of utilities companies and others to do works in the highway to install and maintain the services we rely on.
The city council works with other councils and utilities to share best practice and promote better co-ordination of works; and to act as regulator when works are not undertaken with a permit or within the terms of any permit issued.
In the next financial year, the city council intends to become a Lane Rental Scheme authority, which will improve our street permitting operation by including the busiest streets at the busiest times in a scheme which charges a higher rate for occupying those roads at those times, so incentivising work to be done quicker or differently, so returning the road to use as soon as possible.
Total investment in maintenance of the local highway network
Optimising value through collaboration
Extra to the above we are co-ordinating our strategy in line with other funding streams to maximise the economic and social returns for the city and its residents including the Local Transport Fund (LTF), Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP), Green Light Fund (GLF), Intelligent Traffic Fund (ITMF), Active Travel Fund (ATF) and Safer Streets initiatives to name a few.