Good News for the Highway Maintenance Sector

The roads in the UK can generally be a source of sorrow for many motorists. With potholes galore it can seem, but we at Barbour ABI are able to shed some positive light on the subject. The percentage of infrastructure output taken by the roads sector has increased steadily in recent years, from less than 18% in 2014 to almost 24% in 2018.

We can also reveal that the expenditure on roads infrastructure specifically had increased by more than 22% in 2018. What is more, this figure has been steadily growing for several years now and has almost doubled from the four years previous.

Jane Tarver, Researcher and Editor at Barbour ABI sights that “Highways maintenance accounts for a significant percentage of UK infrastructure spending. It is generally recognised that sizeable investment is required to make the UK’s road network fit for purpose. Considerable investment is being directed to fix road problems such as potholes, a situation exacerbated by recent UK weather conditions.”

The Government continues to explore ways of bringing more private capital into road building. The Government has supported projects previously such as the expansion of Heathrow, which has now been blocked due to environmental challenges. However, it is expected that the funding model for such a thing is likely to undergo a variety of changes over the coming years.

The Government’s budget announcement is set to be on the 11th March 2020 it will be interesting to see to see how this plays out for the highway maintenance sector as well as infrastructure as a whole, where previous capital expenditure on the national roads was the equivalent of 16% of the total spend by the Department for Transport.