The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Better Roads

Speaker, Dr Emily Andrews of the Institute for Government, provided an overview of the recently published Performance Tracker which brings together more than 100 data series to provide a comprehensive picture of Government s performance in running key public services.

She explained that the chapter on local neighbourhood services, which includes data on road maintenance indicates that, despite reduced revenue budgets, local authorities have found efficiencies – with the resilience of the network generally holding up. However, against a backdrop of low public satisfaction levels and continued pressure on revenue budgets, her main question to those present was, to use a mining analogy, what was the canary in the coal mine? And, will there be a tipping point ahead as experienced in other public services, such as prisons? She suggested that a more consistent approach to funding, rather than large rises reported in other areas when services start to fail, would be more effective.

A copy of the report can be found at : https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/Performance tracker oct 2017 web.pdf see pages 1-8 and 61-68.

Meeting minutes can be found here.