Our long-term plan for keeping our roads maintained and fit for purpose.
Our Highways asset management policy and strategy describes how we will maintain the city’s highway network over the long term.
The strategy includes
The strategy brings together all of the requirements and objectives for managing the highway network.
We've considered the views of our customers; residents, businesses and the travelling public to determine acceptable levels of service for maintenance of our highways.
The purpose of the strategy is to enable us to manage and maintain these infrastructure assets in a way that best meets the needs of the present without passing on un-affordable costs to future generations.
We've used forecasts of the long term performance of our highways to understand how much funding is required to deliver these levels of service and also what level of service is achievable with our existing funding.
Read or download our highway asset management policy and strategy
We take part in the National Highways and Transportation (NHT) survey each year. The survey gathers public opinion on a range of highway issues including the condition and standard of maintenance of our roads and pavements.
The survey has shown that levels of satisfaction are declining although levels of satisfaction with the condition and maintenance of our highway infrastructure are higher than average for the South-East region. The survey also shows that residents of Brighton & Hove believe that the council should protect funding for highways maintenance with only 3% believing that it would be acceptable to reduce funding.
You can get the data from the National Highways and Transportation public satisfaction survey on the NHT website.
We will regularly update our strategy. The current strategy covers carriageway surfaces. These are our largest infrastructure asset with a gross value of £0.97 billion. Future editions will include more detail on other infrastructure assets.
The strategy shows that current levels of funding are insufficient to hold back the decline in the condition of the city’s highway network.
This shortfall in funding reflects the overall financial situation across all council services. We're working to reduce, where possible, future decline in the condition of the city’s roads by carrying out preventative maintenance. We’ll be working closely with contractors to further develop innovative approaches that may help to reduce maintenance costs without compromising safety and quality.
Over the medium and long term we will also continue to explore alternative funding mechanisms that can help to close some of the funding shortfall. Find out more about our budget.