Hansard

The Convener: Con

Item 3 is a briefing from the Auditor General and his team on the recent report "Maintaining Scotland's roads".

Mr Robert Black (Auditor General for Scotland):

We all know that there is a huge amount of public interest in the condition of Scottish roads, with frequent media reports about potholes and the like, conge...

George Lyon (Argyll and Bute) (LD): LD

The key messages report states that councils have reported that clearing the maintenance backlog would cost"around £1.5 billion, including £900 million for r...

David Pia (Audit Scotland):

The Executive has not pronounced on the councils' estimates, which are, in essence, built up from the estimates of road engineers. We qualify our statement b...

George Lyon: LD

Exhibit 9 on page 15 of the report contains information on the proportion of councils' road maintenance revenue budgets that is devoted to structural mainten...

Mr Black:

David Pia will answer the question on the councils that did not provide a breakdown of revenue expenditure.George Lyon may find exhibit 10 on page 17 useful....

David Pia:

On the detailed question, John Lincoln may be in a better position to answer.

George Lyon: LD

I am trying to get some correlation between exhibits 3, 7 and 9. The reader cannot read through cause and impact. What is the background to this?

John Lincoln (Audit Scotland):

In relation to exhibit 9, you would need to ask the councils that could not respond why they could not respond. We asked for the information on several occas...

George Lyon: LD

You make the point that most of the budgets are based on historical spend. Surely, the figures give you an indication of what spend was historically.

John Lincoln:

We were not able to get the specific information going back that far. A lot of it pre-dates the reorganisation of local government.

George Lyon: LD

But you argue that the budget is built on historical spend. The point that I am trying to make is that, although this is a snapshot of one year, it should gi...

John Lincoln:

We did the correlations to try to look at that; however, there are issues about what the state of the roads was in the first place. For example, some council...

Robin Harper (Lothians) (Green): Green

The report highlights an extraordinary diversity of practice among the councils. At paragraph 22, the report states:"The cost of bringing the road network up...

David Pia:

There is no such formula. Our best estimate is that it would certainly take 10 years' investment in structural maintenance, which would have to be given prio...

John Lincoln:

One of the report's recommendations is that councils should get together to produce an agreed methodology to calculate the backlog of work. All 32 councils h...

Robin Harper: Green

I was focusing not on calculating the costs of the backlog, but on how much more councils will have to spend on other maintenance of roads as a consequence o...

Caroline Gardner (Audit Scotland):

The best answer that we can give to your questions is that there would need to be calculations on a council-by-council basis. However, a strong example is gi...

Susan Deacon (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab): Lab

I apologise for missing the earlier part of the meeting.I have three questions, the first of which is about levels of investment. What comparative data are a...

Mr Black:

I will try to answer the first two questions and will ask my colleagues to answer the third question, on technical issues and management. At paragraph 31 of ...

David Pia:

We suggest that councils need to improve their information and asset management systems and we refer to the Scottish road maintenance condition survey, which...

John Lincoln:

One of the advantages of the technology is that if we have good information on the condition of the roads and have a good idea of the traffic, we can have a ...

Mr Black:

On page 34 of "Maintaining Scotland's roads", in appendix 3, we have included a description of some of the technical methods of assessing road condition, whi...

George Lyon: LD

Exhibit 14 on page 22 shows that there is huge variation in the cost of reconstruction among councils, from Dumfries and Galloway Council at £23 per square m...

John Lincoln:

I imagine that you would need to talk to the councils about that matter. I know that some councils cannot provide that information because they have not unde...

George Lyon: LD

We are talking about a difference of more than £60 per square metre. If the councils that I mentioned crossed into Dumfries and Galloway and purchased the wo...

John Lincoln:

Many councils already contract out most major reconstruction, resurfacing or structural maintenance work because they do not have such economies of scale. If...

Mr Black:

In my previous incarnation—I was chief executive of Tayside Regional Council for five years—I knew something about this issue, which is why I was pleased to ...

George Lyon: LD

But you cannot explain what underpins those variations.

Mr Black:

No. This study captured data that we thought that we could present in this reasonably reliable form. It is up to councils to analyse that information to find...