That’s the finding of the Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey, published today (23 March 2016), which estimates that getting the roads back to scratch would incur a one-off cost of £11.8bn and would take 14 years to clear the carriageway backlog.

Alan Mackenzie, chairman of the Asphalt Industry Alliance, which produces the ALARM survey, said: “The network is ageing and the cumulative effect of decades of underfunding is continuing to take its toll. Add in the impacts of flooding and increased traffic and you start to appreciate the scale of the problem our local authorities are facing.”

Despite the government’s commitment to £6bn of funding for local road maintenance between 2015 and 2021, highways departments in England are yet to feel the benefit and report that overall budgets have dropped by 16%.

This is reflected in the increase in average budget shortfalls – the difference between the money highways teams need to keep the carriageway in reasonable order and the amount they actually receive – which has risen by almost 50% (from £3.2m last year to £4.6m this).

The number of potholes filled over the last year has dropped, but is still worryingly high at over 2 million. A third of respondents had to cope with unforeseen costs (primarily due to adverse weather), but there was a reduction in the average additional costs incurred, perhaps as a result of a relatively mild winter.

The amount local authorities need to bring their roads up to scratch, however, remains fairly static – although still significant at almost £12 billion – indicating that highways teams are doing more with less as a result of improved efficiencies.

“Local authorities continue to face increasing pressure on resources but now have better processes and a more focused preventative approach,” said Alan Mackenzie. “The adoption of highways asset management plans for example is allowing them to work smarter with less money.

“However, our roads are deteriorating at a faster rate than they can be repaired and more significant problems for the future are building unseen below the surface.

“It is clear that there is still not enough money available to tackle the backlog of repairs needed to get our road network back into anything approaching a reasonable condition.”

Responding to the survey, Cllr Peter Box, Transport spokesman at the Local Government Association, said: “It is becoming increasingly urgent to address the roads crisis we face as a nation.  

“Councils fixed a pothole every 15 seconds again last year despite significant budget reductions leaving them with less to spend on fixing our crumbling roads. Local authorities are proving remarkably efficient in how they use this diminishing funding pot but they remain trapped in a frustrating cycle that will only ever leave them able to patch up our deteriorating roads.

“Our roads crisis is only going to get worse unless we address it as a national priority. The Government's own traffic projections predict a potential increase in local traffic of more than 40% by 2040. Councils desperately need long-term and consistent funding to invest in the resurfacing projects which our road network desperately needs over the next decade.”