New report shows the East is one of the worst regions for road conditions
It's trailing behind national targets
A new report shows the condition of road surfaces in the East is consistently lower than in the rest of England.
National Highways has consistently met its target of 96.2% of road surfaces on motorways and major A-roads being in ‘good condition’ and not requiring further investigation for maintenance, but performance varies across National Highways’ regions.
That's according to information from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), which shows that the condition of road surfaces in National Highways’ East region – covering Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Essex and Bedfordshire, is trailing the national-level target by nearly 3%, and has had the lowest proportion of good condition road surfaces for the last three years.
The South West region, covering Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, and Wiltshire, consistently performs the best.
The ORR’s Benchmarking Road Surface Condition Report also says the East region’s strategic road network has a higher proportion of A-roads, which are harder to maintain, and has more concrete roads, which do not perform as well as asphalt.
However, new data shows that while these effects are significant, the East region underperforms even when these factors are accounted for.
Feras Alshaker, director of planning and performance at ORR said:
“National Highways has met its road surface condition performance target for the sixth year running.
"Our report is an important tool that we expect National Highways to use to understand the variations in the company’s regions and share intelligence with road operators elsewhere to help ensure performance is maintained at a consistently high level.
“We will continue to hold National Highways to account, including on road surface condition, a key output of its asset management decision making, on behalf of all users of the strategic road network.”