Committee
Public Audit Committee 23 February 2011
23 Feb 2011 · S3 · Public Audit Committee
Item of business
Section 23 Reports
“Maintaining Scotland’s Roads: a follow-up report”
Ronnie Nicol (Audit Scotland)
Watch on SPTV
Scotland’s road network consists of almost 56,000km of road. Transport Scotland is responsible for 3,400km of motorways and trunk roads, and councils are responsible for 26,000km of classified roads and 26,400km of unclassified roads. The road network is valued at £38 billion in its present condition.Despite public spending in Scotland rising by around 25 per cent since our previous report, the condition of Scotland’s roads has worsened. Only 63 per cent are now in acceptable condition.Trunk roads tend to carry higher volumes of traffic at greater speeds, so they need to be maintained to higher standards for safety reasons. Although trunk roads are in better condition than council-maintained roads, the percentage of trunk roads in acceptable condition has declined—from 84 per cent in 2006 to 78 per cent in 2010.The condition of council-maintained roads has also declined. For classified roads, 70 per cent were in acceptable condition in 2005, but that figure fell to 66 per cent by 2010. Unclassified roads, typically those in built-up areas, are in the poorest condition, with only 58 per cent in acceptable condition.As the condition of our roads declines, it is no great surprise that the cost of repairing the road maintenance backlog is increasing. The estimated cost of removing all network defects in Scotland, no matter how slight, is more than £2.25 billion, which is £1 billion more than in 2004. The road maintenance backlog for trunk roads is now £713 million. For council-maintained roads, it is £1.54 billion—although we know that that is an underestimate, as it does not include the cost of removing all the defects of councils’ bridges, lighting and footways.10:15 Various surveys by organisations such as the Automobile Association, the Royal Automobile Club Foundation and Transport Scotland have shown that users’ satisfaction with road conditions has decreased over time.It is perhaps surprising that we have reported a seemingly limited impact from the severe winter of 2009-10 on the latest road condition results. Although that winter caused significant damage to the road network compared with a normal winter, it tended to affect those roads that were already categorised as being in the worst condition, so their deterioration did not register in the road condition data.During 2009-10, a total of £654 million was spent on road maintenance in Scotland, of which £162 million was spent on trunk road maintenance and £492 million was spent on council-maintained roads. Although that represents an increase in expenditure of 5 per cent compared with 2004-05 after taking account of general inflation, road construction inflation was considerably higher than general inflation over that period. The effect is that, in purchasing terms, councils spent 13 per cent less, and Transport Scotland spent 32 per cent less, on road maintenance in 2009-10 than they did in 2004-05.Transport Scotland estimates that it would need to spend £275 million to get trunk roads into a steady state, whereby a fixed amount of roads need structural maintenance each year. Councils estimate that, to maintain roads in their current condition, they would need to spend £45 million more each year for the next 10 years on long-term structural maintenance. The consequences of not spending at that level are forecast to result in a £1 billion decline in the value of the local road network and a 10 per cent reduction in its condition.Despite the challenging financial outlook, it is still somewhat disappointing to note the limited progress that has been made on implementing the recommendations that were made in 2004 on the management of road maintenance. I will give you some examples to illustrate that. Asset management plans for roads, supported by appropriate inventory and information systems, are a fundamental requirement of good management. Although the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland—SCOTS—provides support to councils in developing them, only a third of councils have complete road asset management plans in place, and several councils do not have sufficient data on the condition of items such as bridges, footways and non-illuminated signs.Furthermore, councils could do more to benchmark their road maintenance costs and their performance against other councils and the private sector as a way of identifying potential improvements. The 32 councils use a variety of different performance indicators, and that lack of consistency in the measures that are used makes it difficult to compare performance.There is also scope for more partnership working on road maintenance issues. There is some joint working or collaborative activity between councils—much of it at an early stage—but Tayside Contracts remains the only example of a multi-council consortium being established to undertake road maintenance, and it dates from before the reorganisation of local government in 1996. As we have said in our report, there is scope to develop a costed model that would help councils to assess and understand the benefits of sharing services.In his earlier comments, the Auditor General referred to the difficult decisions that the Government and councils face about spending on road maintenance and other services. There is an urgent need to explore new ways of working, and the national review that we propose represents an opportunity to stimulate service redesign and increase the pace at which the potential for shared services, partnership working and a more flexible use of resources is examined.I hope that these remarks have been helpful to the committee. My audit team colleagues and I will be happy to respond to any questions.
In the same item of business
The Convener
Lab
Item 2 is consideration of “Maintaining Scotland’s Roads: a follow-up report”, which is a topical issue. I invite the Auditor General to comment.
Mr Black
Thank you, convener. The only interest that I have to declare is that I own a car. Laughter.
Mr Frank McAveety (Glasgow Shettleston) (Lab)
Lab
And it is off the road.
Mr Black
It was off the road for 48 hours because of an unforeseen pothole.
Mr McAveety
Lab
Why is that not in the report?
Mr Black
I sometimes think that, if we want media headlines, all we have to do is publish a report on potholes. However, to be serious—and we always report on serious...
Ronnie Nicol (Audit Scotland)
Scotland’s road network consists of almost 56,000km of road. Transport Scotland is responsible for 3,400km of motorways and trunk roads, and councils are res...
The Convener
Lab
I thank the Auditor General and Ronnie Nicol for a comprehensive introduction to a significant issue for us all. You have posed a challenge to politicians of...
Mr Black
We have no easy answer to that. If we had, we would share it with you. It is one of those occasions on which the analysis asks more questions than it answers...
Murdo Fraser
Con
I endorse the convener’s remarks. The problem, though, is not just with local roads; driving on the M90, as I do several times a week, I find myself weaving ...
Ronnie Nicol
Yes. We carried out the audit work for this report last summer and autumn, and the statistics from SCOTS that we have used are for a similar period.I should ...
Murdo Fraser
Con
Perhaps we need another category—“extra worse”, perhaps—for future reports.I was interested to read in the second key message that public spending in Scotlan...
Ronnie Nicol
As this was a follow-up audit, we were essentially looking at the data that we had received in the previous audit. On this occasion, we focused on levels of ...
Murdo Fraser
Con
Exhibit 6 on page 11 compares the situation in Scotland with that in England and Wales. It is clear that we are in a much worse position than they are; for e...
Ronnie Nicol
I am afraid that we did not drill into those differences to find out the reasons for them, but we thought that it might at least be of interest to present th...
Mr Black
That is another issue that has emerged from the report to which others will have to provide answers.
Murdo Fraser
Con
I do not know how we are fixed with regard to following up this report, but it is an issue that we could consider.
Mr McAveety
Lab
In much of this discussion it seems that personal testimonies are required. It would be helpful if committee members helped each other in their appeals to lo...
Ronnie Nicol
The figure was provided by professional transport managers, so it reflects their judgment on keeping the roads in an acceptable, usable condition.
Mr McAveety
Lab
What role is there for national direction in the debate, given that despite the publication of a major report little has changed dramatically?The differences...
Ronnie Nicol
I think that such factors are part of what has driven us to recommend that everyone comes together to have a new look at things at a national level. There ha...
George Foulkes
Lab
Please excuse the pun when I say that we seem to keep trying to reinvent the wheel. Lord Wheatley had it right in the early 1970s—
Jamie Hepburn
SNP
Is he still in the Lords with you, George?
George Foulkes
Lab
No. I am talking about the late Lord Wheatley. He is no longer there—at least, I did not notice him, anyway.As I recall, the best time for road maintenance w...
Mr Black
Yes.
George Foulkes
Lab
I get the impression—this is not a party-political point in any way—that officials in the Scottish Executive or Government transport department are preoccupi...
Anne McLaughlin
SNP
Would trams fall into that category?
Mr Black
If I may, I would prefer not to respond to the latter part of Mr Foulkes’s comment. On the former part, as some committee members might be aware, I have had ...
George Foulkes
Lab
Of course the one good thing about trams is that they do not create potholes, do they?
The Convener
Lab
We will leave that one for the moment.