In short: without a radical change, it’s hard to see things getting any better – and the claims and counterclaims made by those in local and national government will only start to look more ridiculous compared to what we can see with our own eyes.
February is just about the worst time of the year for wrecked roads – although that suggests there is a “best” time of the year, and I fear we’ve reached the point where there may not be. For almost two years, I served as Kent County Council’s cabinet member for highways and transport, so I have the scars of being at the forefront of what is, in all honesty, a complete and utter mess.
Road maintenance has been underfunded for years and councils end up receiving the blame for what are political choices made by whoever is in Government nationally. None of this is helped by wild claims – both locally and nationally – but I’ll touch on that later.
How serious is the problem? Well, driving or walking along the road quickly gives an answer of “incredibly” but, to quantify, the backlog for maintaining the roads, pavements, streetlights, drains, bridges, tunnels and so on in Kent alone stands at around £1.3billion. To keep the roads as “good” as they currently are, to maintain a so-called steady state, would cost around £130million-a-year across the county. Which makes a bit of a mockery of successive Governments saying they are throwing huge amounts of funds at councils to fix the roads, not to mention the ludicrous apportioning of blame when everything isn’t fixed overnight.