Roads maintenance boost for Lancashire roads announced

Lancashire County Council has announced it will spend an extra £5m on road maintenance over the next 12 months.

The Reform UK-run authority says the additional funding will focus on “preventative” treatments designed to “accelerate improvements” in the condition of the road network.

That means the money will be poured into pre-planned surface upgrades covering substantial stretches of highway, rather than spent filling individual potholes as they appear.

The authority’s leader, Stephen Atkinson, said it was part of a planned transformation of the highways service.

Progressive Lancashire opposition group leader Azhar Ali welcomed the investment, but called for engagement with county councillors over decisions about where the cash is spent.

“People always question, ‘Why was it this road and not the other [that has been resurfaced]?’” County Cllr Ali said.

“I think…that [some] discussion would instil confidence in the elected members, [who] would also then be able to explain [the situation] to the members of the public.”

However, cabinet member for highways and transport Warren Goldsworthy said spending would not be a matter of choice – but the result of a “data-driven” process.

He added: “We’re more than happy to share that data. What I’m not going to do is sit down and have a bun fight – with everybody arguing over which roads [are treated].

“When [people] do ask the question, ‘Why’s this road been chosen over that one?’, I’ll release the data, which will clearly show why.  It won’t be a choice issue.”

Every year, the county council identifies routes for scheduled maintenance amongst the 4,400 miles of road for which it is responsible across Lancashire – which excludes the separate local authority areas of Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen. This year, just over 100 have been slated for work.

Schemes are selected in accordance with a 15-year strategy adopted in 2015 by the then Labour administration – and adhered to by the Conservatives during their eight years in office until 2025 – which is designed to best maintain the overall condition of the highway network, rather than take a ‘worst first’ approach to repairs.

That sometimes means roads that do not appear to be in a poor state are resurfaced, to the consternation of motorists.

It is the budget for that scheduled maintenance work – which was set at £20.9m in February – that will be boosted by the additional £5m agreed by the county council’s cabinet.

A separate £28m was ringfenced during the budget-setting process for so-called “reactive” repairs to potholes which develop during the course of the year and meet the minimum depth level the authority sets for filling them in – 40mm.  That element of the fund can expand – at the expense of pre-planned repairs – if more potholes than expected open up.

A report presented to cabinet members stated that the additional money had been sourced from “funding carried forward from 2025/26 as part of the provisional outturn position”. But when asked for clarification about whether that amounted to an underspend last year and, if so, in which part of the budget it had occurred, the Local Democracy Reporting Service was told that the cash was coming from reserves.

The extra funding was unveiled as part of the county council’s programme of priorities for 2026/27, which also included other highways pledges, including the launch of a new ‘Report It Lancashire’ app this autumn to improve the system for flagging road defects to the authority.

The long-trailed use of artificial intelligence (AI) cameras to assess the condition of the road network is also set to be embedded by the county council in July.