Insights on road infrastructure management - Find a freedom of information request

Interested in a comprehensive understanding of how road maintenance is organized and prioritized by local authorities. 

Could you please share information about the following:

1. What is the length of your asphalt paved roads? Could you give an estimate of the annual budget for resurfacing/maintaining them?

2. How often is the road and related asset condition assessed? When was the last time a report on the road surface quality was conducted?

3. Do you use a Pavement Management System (PMS), and/or other tools to make planning and coordination easy?

4. Do you have a full and comprehensive inventory of all the road assets (road signs, light poles, etc.) that the municipality owns such as location, condition, etc?

5. How many insurance cases were reported about car and bicycle damages/accidents last year due to the road condition?

6. How many reports or requests to fix road infrastructure damages did you receive from citizens concerning your roads last year?

I can confirm that the information requested is held by Lincolnshire County Council. I have detailed below the information that is being released to you.

1. The length of our asphalt paved roads is around 9000kms.

This varies slightly from year to year but is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/road-lengthstatistics-rdl

The budget also varies significantly depending on funding settlements from a number of sources such as specific pothole funds from central government or settlements from Lincolnshire County Council such as recent investments in drainage repairs. In recent years the amount spent within our maintenance contract has been around £60m per year which includes all our maintenance, cyclical works, street lighting, surface dressing, structures and drainage as well as pothole repairs and surfacing.

Our funding settlement from central government can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/highways-maintenance-fundingallocations

2. Condition survey frequencies are detailed in the table in paragraph 4.3.4 of the HIAMP ( Highways Infrastructure Asset Management plan.) Highways infrastructure asset management plan (HIAMP) (lincolnshire.gov.uk)

3. Yes, we use Confirm, a UKPMS accredited PMS. Street Manager is used to assist coordination of works and works programmes are published using Power BI and mapping tools.

4. This varies with asset groups. For a detailed breakdown of inventory and our confidence with the data see our published HIAMS section 6.

5. Total amount of claims in the last year is 1797

6. In the period 1 Jan 23 to 31 Dec 23 we received 23225 reports of faults with roads.