Transparency data

Local highway maintenance transparency reports 2026

Published 21 October 2026

Applies to England

This report contains data from the local highway authority highway maintenance transparency reports for 2026. These figures are:

• self-reported by local highway authorities
• taken from the highway maintenance transparency reports published by 152 out of 153 local highway authorities from their respective websites

This report sets out further details on the data source to support understanding.

Local road maintenance ratings

The Department for Transport (DfT) will use the data in the highways maintenance transparency reports to assess how well local highway authorities are maintaining their roads and to determine eligibility for highways maintenance incentive funding.

As part of this process, further engagement with local highway authorities will occur to review and verify the data in their transparency reports. As such, the data are currently provisional and subject to change.

DfT will publish our version of the final disaggregated data in early 2027 alongside the local road maintenance ratings.

Definitions given to local highway authorities

See the guidance for completing a local highways maintenance transparency report (PDF) for more information about the definitions given to local authorities.

Geographic coverage

These figures apply to local roads in England and exclude the strategic road network, which is managed by National Highways. There are 184,300 miles of local roads in England, making up 97.6% of the total road network.

These figures include all local highway authorities in England except Birmingham, where they have not published their local highway maintenance transparency report. There are 1,600 miles of local roads in Birmingham, which make up 8% of local roads in the West Midlands region and 1% of all local roads in England.

The figures also do not include data from Transport for London (TfL) due to ongoing conversations with TfL regarding their data.

TfL manages approximately 5% of local roads in London and 0.2% of all local roads in England.

Funding, expenditure and maintenance data

Funding

See the highways maintenance funding allocations for more details about how funding was allocated.

Expenditure

The expenditure data shows the total spend on local highway maintenance as reported by local highway authorities in England in their transparency reports.

Local highways authorities reported:

• actual spend for the financial year ending March 2025
• actual spend for the financial year ending March 2026
• projected spend for the financial year ending March 2027

This data is different from DfT’s official statistics for maintenance expenditure, which showed £5.0 billion local highway maintenance expenditure for the financial year ending March 2025.

DfT’s official expenditure statistics are calculated from MHCLG’s official statistics for local authority revenue and local authority capital accounts and apply a broader definition of highway maintenance.

DfT’s official statistics on maintenance expenditure for the financial year ending March 2026 will be published in December 2026 and will not include projections for the year ending March 2027.

Structural and preventative maintenance

The definition of maintenance treatments used in transparency reports is slightly different from the definition used in the official statistics for road condition in England. See the definitions section of the guidance for the transparency reports for full details on the differences between the definitions in the 2 data sources.

DfT aims to work with local authorities to reconcile the definitions for future transparency reports.

DfT’s official statistics on road maintenance treatments for the financial year ending March 2026 did not include projections for the year ending March 2027.

Local highway maintenance summary data

This combines the total findings from 153 local authorities, using data published on their respective websites.

Table 1: Total spend on highways maintenance

Year	Total spend on highways maintenance (£)
2024 to 2025	£4.1 billion
2025 to 2026	£4.4 billion
2026 to 2027 (projected)	£4.9 billion

Source: Calculated by summing the relevant figures in table B1.2.1 from each local highway authority transparency report.

Table 2: Length of carriageway projected to receive maintenance

Financial year	Length of carriageway receiving planned structural maintenance (miles)	Length of carriageway receiving preventative maintenance (miles)	Total length of carriageway receiving maintenance (miles)
2026 to 2027 (projected)	Nearly 2,000 miles	Nearly 5,000 miles	Nearly 7,000 miles

Table 3: Percentage of local highway authorities conducting preventative road maintenance treatments, as projected in their transparency reports

Financial year	Percentage of authorities projecting to deliver preventative road maintenance treatments (%)
2025 to 2026	76%
2026 to 2027	94%

Source: Calculated by summing the relevant figures in table B2.1 from each local highway authority’s highway maintenance transparency reports for 2025 to 2026 and maintenance treatments for highway maintenance transparency reports for 2024 to 2025.

Table 4: Share of potholes filled by reactive repair using temporary or permanent methods

Financial year	Share of potholes filled by reactive repair using permanent methods (%)	Share of potholes filled by reactive repair using temporary methods (%)
2025 to 2026	77%	23%

Source: Calculated by summing the relevant figures in table B3.2.2 from each local highway authority transparency report.

Table 4 focuses on reactive repairs that are carried out to repair a specific pothole. This means it does not cover pothole repairs where the pothole is filled by planned maintenance programmes such as road resurfacing.