Council writes to Minister requesting change to Red highways rating

In the letter below to Simon Lightwood MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Department for Transport, Councillor Paul West, Suffolk County Council Cabinet member for Operational Highways explains why Suffolk's Red status under the new map and traffic-light rating system should be changed to Amber.

This follows a meeting with DfT officials and officers from the council, who explained that the methodology used by the DfT had incorrectly given Suffolk a Red status over spending on highways maintenance, resulting in an overall Red.

Dear Minister,

On behalf of Suffolk County Council, we write to formally place on record a factual error within the Department for Transport’s Local Highway Maintenance Ratings, published on Sunday 11 January 2025.

Suffolk has been rated Red for capital spend. This assessment is based on factually incorrect figures. Over the last two financial years, and consistently over the past five years, every pound received by Suffolk County Council through the Highway Maintenance Grant has been fully invested in the highway service.

Following a meeting with Department for Transport (DfT) officials on Monday, it appears that the RED rating for capital spend has arisen for two specific reasons.

First, the Council did not include the incentive element of the uplift in its June 2025 submission, as confirmation that this funding would be released by DfT had not been received at that point. Confirmation from the Department was only provided in late December 2025. Now that this funding has been confirmed as available cash, plans are in place for it to be fully spent within the current financial year.

Secondly, £10 million of the 2025/26 DfT allocation was brought forward and invested in 2024/25, a decision taken due to longer-term future maintenance funding under the DfT’s Network North mechanism at that time. This decision is clearly reflected in the Transparency Report submitted in June 2025.

For clarity, at the time of the publication of the transparency report (prior to the DfT confirming the 25% incentive fund uplift), Suffolk County Council’s capital spend on highways was £36.398 million in 2025/26 and £47.885 million in 2024/25. This compares with the DfT confirmed capital allocations of £40.833 million and £34.428 million respectively.

Had the £10 million brought forward been spent in 2025/26 instead, and Suffolk County Council included the unconfirmed 25% incentive element spend against this allocation, capital expenditure would have been £49.153 million in 2025/26 and £37.885 million in 2024/25. In either scenario, total capital spend across the two years amounts to £87.038 million, against a total DfT allocation of £78.196 million.

Applying the Department’s own scoring methodology to these figures places Suffolk County Council clearly within the Amber band, rather than Red.

We would therefore be grateful if this factual correction could be reflected as soon as possible in the Department’s published assessment. We see no reason why a correction of this nature cannot be implemented immediately.

We fully support transparency in the reporting of highway maintenance performance. However, transparency can only be meaningful if the data being published is accurate.

Yours sincerely,

Councillor Paul West