Local highways maintenance transparency report

Our local highways maintenance transparency report.

How we maintain local roads, pavements, and the wider highway network in Derbyshire

A1 – What we are responsible for maintaining

We have a duty under The Highways Act 1980 to maintain all adopted highway assets in the county (except within Derby City).

Throughout the county we maintain an extensive number of highway assets including:

• Carriageways - 3,366 miles
• Footways - 2,961 miles
• Cycleways - 282 miles 
• Bridges - 1,192
• Retaining walls - 172 miles
• Drainage gullies - 176,510
• Street lighting columns - 88,156
• Signals - 133
• Pedestrian crossings - 321

Derbyshire is a geographically diverse county containing high moorlands in the northwest and low-lying flood plains in the south and east. These differing environments create a range of maintenance challenges, including snow and ice, flooding, landslips, retaining wall failures and accelerated asset deterioration.

Alongside increasing traffic volumes and the growing proportion of heavier vehicles, these factors place additional pressure on an extensive highway network. To improve resilience and deliver best whole-life value, we continue to increase investment in preventative maintenance treatments, targeted drainage improvements and climate resilience measures designed to slow deterioration and reduce the need for reactive repairs.

A2 – Road conditions in Derbyshire

A2.1. A roads

A2.2. B and C roads

A2.3. U roads

Councils use road condition surveys to assess the state of their roads. The results are grouped into three categories:

• Green – the road is in good condition and no further investigation or treatment is required
• Amber – the road may need maintenance soon
• Red – the road is in poor condition and should be considered for maintenance

The published official statistics for road condition  include more detail about the methodology, timing and coverage of this data.

A2.4 – Additional information on carriageway condition

The method we use to collect our road condition data, the Annual Engineers Inspection (AEI), is an alternative survey to the DfT’s currently recommended SCANNER survey. In the absence of any national guidance regarding AEI treatments, we developed our own Red-Amber-Green indicators in association with our survey provider.

This means that our road condition indices cannot be compared like for like with other councils.

The DfT has recognised the difficulty of comparing differing survey types and has issued guidance, PAS 2161 – Road Condition Monitoring Data Specification, allowing comparison irrespective of road condition survey type.

This specification won’t come into force until 1 April 2027, so to compare and benchmark with the many AEI users before then, we have submitted our most recent figures in the DfT Works Done Survey 2026 using an approach standardised among other AEI users. This will enable us to compare like for like with them.

The new PAS 2161 standard accreditation for the AEI survey gives Derbyshire the following results for financial year 2026-27.

A roads

• Band 1 (Green) - 18.6%
• Band 2 (Pre-Amber) - 47.0%
• Band 3 (Amber) - 30.4%
• Band 4 (Pre-Red) - 3.8%
• Band 5 (Red) - 0.2%

B and C roads

• Band 1 (Green) - 12.1%
• Band 2 (Pre-Amber) - 38.3%
• Band 3 (Amber) - 43.9%
• Band 4 (Pre-Red) - 5.5%
• Band 5 (Red) - 0.1%

U roads

• Band 1 (Green) - 15.5%
• Band 2 (Pre-Amber) - 35.8%
• Band 3 (Amber) - 36.6%
• Band 4 (Pre-Red) - 11.5%
• Band 5 (Red) - 0.6%

A3 – What we're doing about potholes and other road defects

A3.1 – What is a pothole?

The county council’s Highways Infrastructure Assets Safety Inspection Manual (PDF) defines a pothole as “An area of material loss resulting in a vertical edge depression” and has an investigatory depth criterion of 40mm or more in carriageways and 20mm or more in footways, defined crossing points or cycleways.

All work is issued with a response time, which commences once the road fault enquiry is received:

1. Emergency calls should be attended within 2 hours
2. Other response times are:
   • 32 hours (next working day)
   • 9 days
   • 28 days

The response time is based on:

• The width and depth of the pothole.
• Hierarchy of road.
• Speed limit.
• Where it is on the road - in a junction area, wheel track, middle of a running lane, pedestrian crossing point, cycle lane.
• Whether the condition is likely to worsen if left untreated.

A3.2 – What we're doing to tackle potholes

It is estimated that the county council filled 66,784 potholes during 2025-26. Our approach is based on asset management principles that prioritise prevention, permanent repair and whole-life value wherever practical.

We seek to deliver a first-time permanent repair wherever it is safe and efficient to do so, reducing repeat visits, disruption to road users and future maintenance costs. Temporary repairs are only used where immediate safety risks need to be addressed or where a permanent repair would be inefficient due to planned maintenance already programmed at the location.

Alongside conventional repair methods, we use innovative techniques including spray injection patching, thermal patching and Elastomac repairs containing recycled tyre material.

Prevention remains the foundation of our maintenance strategy. We continue to expand our surface dressing, micro-asphalt and asphalt rejuvenation programmes to extend asset life, maintain network condition and reduce pothole formation. Joint sealing, preservation treatments and targeted patching programmes are also used to prevent water ingress and slow deterioration, improving resilience and reducing future reactive maintenance demand.

A3.3 – How members of the public can report potholes and other highway defects

To report road faults, members of the public use our online form  or by contacting us by phone, email or letter .

Online enquiries are automatically entered from the website into our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. If we receive the report by phone, email or letter, then details are manually entered by our trained officers.

If the member of the public has provided their email address, they will receive an acknowledgement and are able to check the status of their enquiry.

A3.4 – What happens after a pothole is reported

When a road fault is reported through the online form, information is requested based on the street location, position in the road, type of road and the width and depth of the road fault. The report is routed to a Highway Inspector who carries out a risk assessment on site based on:

• the width and depth of the fault
• road hierarchy
• speed limit
• location in the road and if the condition is likely to worsen if left untreated

A priority response time is allocated and passed to our Resilience Resource, who treat in accordance with the council’s asset management policies.

A4 – What we spend to maintain the highway network and where the funding is coming from

A4.1 – Spending on highways maintenance

The A4.1 table shows the total highways maintenance expenditure for 2024-25, 2025-26 and projected expenditure for 2026-27, together with a breakdown of expenditure across key asset categories including carriageways, footways, structures, drainage, street lighting and other assets.

 A4.2 – Where our funding for highways maintenance comes from

A5 – Our maintenance plans for this year

A5.1 – Our plans for highways maintenance for 2026-27

Our 2026-27 capital programme will deliver a balanced programme of structural maintenance, preventative maintenance and asset renewal aimed at maximising whole-life value and network resilience, including:

Carriageways – Structural treatments

• Resurface 13.4 miles (21.6km) of carriageway.

Carriageways – Preventative treatments

• Surface Dress 85 miles (136.8km)
• Apply micro-asphalt treatments to 11 miles (17.7km)
• Apply asphalt rejuvenation to 5 miles (8km)
• Deliver targeted patching works to support future preventative treatments

Footways – Structural treatments

• Renew 5.4 miles (8.7km) of footways.

Footways – Preventative treatments

• Apply preventative slurry seal treatments to 9.1 miles (14.6km) of footways.

Other assets

• Deliver bridge strengthening, retaining wall, landslip, drainage and street lighting renewal programmes to improve network resilience and serviceability.

Full details are contained within our capital delivery programme .

A5.2 – Full list of planned carriageway and footway works

Our 2026-27 capital works programme is outlined on our road improvements webpage . It contains a link to our Capital Programme Cabinet Report, information on the types of treatments we use and also the street location of the treatments and the proposed dates of construction.

A5.3 – How decisions are made on our maintenance plans

We use the AEI condition survey to prioritise our works. We survey A and B networks annually and C and U networks over a two-year period.

Sites are assigned a treatment by the engineer, a condition score is produced based on the presence of minor and major cracking, minor and major fretting, surface polishing and structural deformation. These are factored into a formula to calculate the condition score. 

The road’s location and surroundings are given a situational score relating to whether the road is on our Resilient Network, ride quality, area of economic growth, outside school or public building, the amount of reactive maintenance, and others.

Both figures are added to give a Value Management Score which provides a prioritised list for programme development and investment decisions which is sense-checked and the funding allocation is split based on the respective hierarchy lengths. This then goes forward to be approved by Cabinet.