Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the time taken to allocate Local Highways Panel funding for the 2025-26 financial year on road safety improvements in Essex.

Local authorities often use Integrated Transport Block funding for road safety improvements and the Department hopes to announce ITB allocations for 2025/26 for Essex and other authorities shortly. This will allow Essex’s Local Highways Panels to decide how best to use the available funding: the Department does not get involved in local authority decision making of this sort.

On highways maintenance, all local authority allocations for highway maintenance block capital funding in 2025/26, including for Essex County Council, were announced by the Secretary of State for Transport on 20 December 2024 and are published on gov.uk. Essex County Council will be receiving an uplift of over £12 million compared to the current financial year, taking its total funding for the year to nearly £46 million.