REA champions Government action on potholes
Road Emulsion Association welcomes plans to monitor and improve state of the nation’s roads
THE Road Emulsion Association (REA) has recently spoken alongside Future of Roads Minister Lilian Greenwood MP, welcoming plans to monitor and improve the state of the nation’s roads.
The REA warmly supports the Government stepping up efforts to tackle the scourge of potholes blighting roads across England, as Minister Lilian Greenwood outlined in a recent appearance on The Northern Agenda Podcast hosted by journalist Rob Parsons, alongside REA vice-chair David Jobling Purser.
Speaking about the Government’s plan to improve road conditions, the Minister said: ‘We know it’s something that people care deeply about, whether it’s motorists, pedestrians, or cyclists.
‘Ultimately, success means that by the end of this parliament we’ll have a much better maintained road network that serves drivers, pedestrians, cyclists and other road users, and starts to reverse that decade of decline in the state of the country’s roads.’
Under new measures announced earlier this year, councils are required to report on the number of potholes repaired, overall road conditions, and investments in long-term preventative maintenance. The deadline for reporting the information to the Department for Transport, and publicly on local authority websites, was 30 June 2025.
Local authorities who comply with the reporting requirements will receive a share of an additional £500 million of road maintenance funding.
Commenting on how councils will be assessed on their road maintenance spending, the Minister said: ‘We want to know whether that money is spent in line with best practice, for example, maintaining roads before potholes even appear is much more effective than fixing potholes reactively.
‘It will also help us to understand where and how we can provide targeted support to help local authorities to adopt best practice, eg preventative maintenance, but also modern new technologies and new materials, considering how to make roads more resilient in cases of bad weather.
‘I think by making these reports and our assessment of them public, we’re also allowing councils to be more accountable, and of course by being accountable and being public about it, that provides an incentive for them to continue to improve in this area.’
Adding to The Minister’s comments, David Jobling Purser, sales and marketing director at Jobling Purser, said: ‘One of the things that gets cut is preventative maintenance…so the money gets spent on reactive maintenance and filling potholes instead. [Subsequently] there is then less money for preventative maintenance and then the cycle continues.
‘We’ve seen a massive decline in surface dressing volumes since 2012. The REA has been campaigning for a number of years to say the situation is only going to get worse if we don’t address this issue.’
These comments follow the UK Government’s announcement of a record £1.6 billion to help councils resurface local roads. Illustrating the scale of the challenge, The Northern Agenda newsletter reported that for Leeds City Council alone, it would take £288 million over 19 years to bring all 3,000km of roads up to an acceptable standard.
