How we're working for you

In October 2018, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in his Budget Statement that the Government was allocating a further £420 million of new money for local highways maintenance. For Suffolk County Council, this meant an additional highway maintenance allocation of £9.67 million to be spent by the end of March 2019.

Given the limited time frame in which important maintenance work in Suffolk could be delivered, the decision was taken to invest this additional government funding across highway infrastructure assets as detailed below:

• £2.184 million of machine surfacing
• £3.555 million on surface dressing preparatory works
• £1.577 million on thermal road and permanent carriageway patching repairs
• £427,000 of footway surfacing works
• £484,000 of additional maintenance to highway structures
• £505,000 of drainage improvement works
• £552,000 of additional investment into street lighting assets
• £457,000 in road marking refreshments on strategic routes

Find examples of the work completed by the end of March 2019 in Additional Government Funding 2018/19 (PDF, 2.2MB).

We've launched an engagement exercise on our draft Highways Infrastructure Asset Management Plan.

Highway infrastructure asset management is recognised as being the most cost efficient means of managing a highway network. Central government has been encouraging this approach for some time and a large element of its funding to local authorities is now linked to taking this approach.

Suffolk County Council has partially used this approach for some time but we are now taking this opportunity to fully implement this way of working, taking on board best practice that has developed over the last 10 years.

Using this approach, our focus will be to prioritise routes that are used more frequently to connect communities and business areas, and to maintain these to the highest possible standard with the resources available. For example, this will mean that we will often treat roads and pavements with a preventative treatment when they appear to be in a reasonable condition to avoid them deteriorating and needing more expensive, and potentially more disruptive works in future.