Rural Roads

Peter Fortune Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Stuart Anderson]

I do. My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. There is more money being spent by councils than it costs to fix the roads. I will come on to that in detail in a minute. These are serious issues. I have one constituent that people have stopped visiting because their road is now impassable—talk about remoteness and being cut off in rural areas!

[Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend knows, he is also the Member of Parliament for my mother-in-law, so I congratulate him on all his hard work. [Interruption.] Check the words: I said nothing wrong. One issue hitting rural areas is, of course, road works, because residents cannot just take the next left or right turn and sometimes have to detour for miles. Does my hon. Friend agree that it behoves the utility companies to keep residents informed of any road works they are doing, so that residents can plan their journeys in advance?

[Stuart Anderson]

We see that across South Shropshire. My hon. Friend’s mother-in-law is a lovely lady and I was delighted to meet her the other week—I get a few points for that. We are finding that Shropshire council is putting cones in the potholes, because they are that big, or putting up traffic lights, and some of the traffic lights are not working. Those have now been up for weeks, and sometimes several months. That is causing an issue, when it is easier to fix the potholes.

There have been a lot of short-term fixes, and we need a longer-term strategy. I set up a survey in my constituency, and 500 people responded in a very short period of time. One in four have experienced vehicle damage, nearly 90% have had a near miss, and 98% said that the roads are in poor or very poor condition. I would love to meet that 2% and see where they are travelling.