Staffordshire county councillors approve 'highways roadmap'

The “highways roadmap” aims to tackle long-standing maintenance issues across the county and prioritises higher quality repairs to reduce disruption for road users, a report to the latest Staffordshire County Council cabinet meeting said.

The meeting was told that investment included more than £40 million from developer funds, which were contributed to local areas as part of securing planning permission, to enable new developments and economic growth. And £15m is being invested into dealing with “low level” road defects.

Councillor Peter Mason, cabinet member for strategic highways, said: “For 2026/27 we’re bringing a total planned investment across highways and transport of circa £138m. The biggest proportion – about 53 per cent of that – is in highway maintenance and about £72.8m will go into highways.

“This is to try and reflect the scale of the ageing network, the growing backlog and more frequent impactful weather events that are diminishing the quality of our roads. The emphasis we are placing is on long-term preventative maintenance rather than short-term fixes.

“We’re looking to address structural issues across our networks, tackle hotspots that are in particularly poor condition and deal with some of the drainage issues and footways. Additionally over the two years we ourselves, through local funding, will be investing £15m into fixing those low-level defects – particularly those potholes that blight everyday journeys of all road users.

“This is an attempt to stop the decline each year, where we have more and more emergency events come the winter months. January and February this year sees the numbers have doubled in the last five years.

“Alongside maintenance, 2026/27 investment supports junction upgrades, traffic signalling, local safety schemes, bus infrastructure and services, journey time reliability and connectivity. We’ve brought it all together because that presents an opportunity for us to achieve one of our goals, which is more pounds in the ground.

“If we combine those travel improvements and infrastructure maintenance needs into a single package of work, we do the planning, management, back office work once and we invest more money into the ground. That’s why we have combined it this year into a single capital programme.”

Councillor Martin Rogerson said: “There’s a lot of focus on potholes, but our footways are also in need of a lot of attention. What is planned in this year’s budget for the footways?”

Councillor Mason responded: “Our footways have deteriorated and part of that was that the footway maintenance programme was suspended for a number of years; the original suspension being generated through heavy push for digital connectivity in domestic areas. They were being dug up by the utilities.

“However that did go on for some time and only really got reinstated last year. There were some issues with it and at the back end of the year I did suspend some of the work – we weren’t getting reliable outcomes in terms of the quality.

“We’ve been away and reviewed that and I’m pleased to say in this capital programme there is £3.1m allocated to footway repairs. Alongside that we’ve brought some additional changes to the way we deliver them; one being dedicated pre-works weed treatments, the second is we’re going to do road sweeping on a daily basis at the end of each shift so we don’t see the gully issues that were arising from the works last year.

"The third one is we’re effectively bringing back a Staffordshire County Council clerk of works to oversee preventative maintenance. They were lost as part of the overall plan 10 or 12 years ago when we outsourced our supply, and this gives the county council more control, more oversight and more input to ensure the works are ready to be executed and are being executed to the standards we expect.”

Fellow cabinet members approved the combined highways and transport capital programme, which is set to be submitted to the Government’s Department for Transport as the council’s Local Transport Delivery Plan.

Councillor Andrew Mynors, cabinet member for connectivity, said: “The document set out of the road to a better network has been very well received in a lot of local parish meetings, and for people to understand what we are doing and what our ambition is. This time of year is very stressful for residents looking at the network and driving on rural roads.

“I think we’re working very well together to try and bring some common sense into the management of these networks.”

But Conservative councillors at the authority have said the highways roadmap looks more like a “car crash”. They highlighted a three-month pause on new repairs between July and October last year, as well as deterioration of Staffordshire’s roads during the winter.

Conservative shadow strategic highways cabinet member Councillor Simon Tagg said: “Residents are now seeing some of the worst roads we have ever experienced and it’s no coincidence. You have to fix roads when conditions are right – instead, Reform chose to slam the brakes on repairs for months during the best possible weather, leaving Staffordshire completely exposed when the wet winter arrived.

“The result? Thousands fewer potholes fixed, and thousands more appearing.

“Reform are still restricting roadworks in town centres meaning repairs to many of the worst roads in the county may not happen. Nobody enjoys roadworks but people expect their roads to be safe and maintained.

“We all know that lack of government funding has had an impact on the roads for many years, which is why we need to use what we have intelligently and effectively. Until Reform change their failed approach, Staffordshire residents will continue to pay the price for their mistakes.”