The highways budget has been significantly reduced over the last few years which means we can't do everything and all works have to be prioritised.
Prudential Borrowing
In 2011 it was estimated that there was a backlog in maintenance of £8m for highways, £48m for streetlights, and £31m for bridges. The council decided to borrow £50m so that it could properly invest in its highways assets, carrying out better repairs that would last rather than short term repairs that wouldn't and would cost more in the long run. To date a total of £50.9m has been spent on this programme with a further £2.4m approved in 2020/21. A further £13.6m is planned over the next 5 years.
Government Grants
Most of the funding for highway maintenance comes from annual grants awarded from Central Government through the Department for Transport. We also bid for additional funds for specific projects such as the Fixing the Link project in Bletchley and the A421 Improvement and Pinch Point projects.
You can find out more about DfT funding for road resurfacing projects in 2023/24 and 2024/25 below. Alternatively, view the list of DfT funded projects here
Council Budget
The draft Council budget 2021-22 for Highways and Transport funding can be viewed in Annexe L
Parking revenue is also ringfenced to fund specific works including highways maintenance. This is a legal obligation set out in Section 55(d) of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. The only areas parking revenue can fund are: off street parking provision, public transport, highways and road improvements and environment improvements.
Green Claims
Vehicles regularly damage our infrastructure and so we look to recover those repair costs from them and their insurance companies if possible. This is called Green Claims. It can be a lengthy process but it means that we can recover the costs of the damage without having to use up valuable council budgets.
Section 106 (S106) and MK Tariff
S106 funding is a legal agreement paid by developers to the council to cover the cost of the impact of growth. For highways, more development means more impact on our roads, redways and footways so S106 may be used to help with this such and could fund all or part of a scheme. There are strict rules around S106 and what it can be spent on. You can find out more about Section 106 planning obligations on gov.uk
There are several large expansion areas of development across Milton Keynes so a unique 'umbrella' S106 fund was created called the MK Tariff. The overall total of developer contributions to the Tariff will be around £310m. This money is re-invested into a programme of strategic and local infrastructure projects mainly led by the council.
Additional Department for Transport (DfT) funding for MK Highways
Following the cancellation of the Northern section of HS2, the Department for Transport (DfT) redistributed the funding set aside for this project across the country to various local authorities including Milton Keynes City Council (MKCC).
A total of £1,614,000 was allocated to Milton Keynes; £807,000 in the budget year 2023/24 and £807,000 in 2024/25. As part of the acceptance of this additional funding, MKCC must list what this funding is spent on, and this is set out below as Part 1 and Part 2.
Part 1 - 2024/25
MKCC decided to invest this extra funding on road resurfacing projects to aid improvements to the local road network, particularly roads most affected over the recent winter period where extremely low temperatures and excess surface water contributed to the deterioration of the road surface.
The highways team put together a programme of works using a combination of information from resident reports, highways inspector assessments and from AI software that maps the road condition. Using all this data, we can determine which roads need to be prioritised for resurfacing.
We have created lists of roads using the template supplied by the Department for Transport and have published these lists on the same page where we have published this statement. These lists identify where the funding will be spent, the cost to undertake the works, the area of road surface to be improved and the potential benefits.
The programme for works in 2023/2024 may be viewed on the MKCC website under ‘Roadworks and Road Maintenance’ or click on the links below to view the individual schemes.
DfT Funded Schemes (Word format)
DfT Funded Schemes (Excel format)
The list for works planned to be undertaken in the financial year 2024/25 only includes schemes planned up until 31 August 2024*.
Part 2 - 2023/24
During 2023/2024, we have used the additional funding with our own highway maintenance budget, to deliver road resurfacing schemes.
The Gripfibre Surfacing Schemes 23/24 may be viewed here
The Road Resurfacing Programme 23/24 may be viewed here
*The existing highways service provider contract ends on 31 March 2024. Over the past 18 months a commissioning process has been underway to draft a new contract and complete the tendering process. Due to the size and scale of this process it has been necessary to extend the existing contract up to 31 August 2024 to cover the mobilisation period for the new contract which will be officially announced on 2 April. The new contact will start on the 1 September 2024 meaning that our budget year will be split. The new contractor will be required to mobilise and deliver all programmed work from this date. Following the announcement, further updates on the programmes will be released on our website.