Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing the level of Vehicle Excise Duty retained by local authorities to be directly allocated to local road maintenance.

Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) is collected by the DVLA on behalf of HM Treasury. Estimates for the amount of VED raised in Essex is not available.

The OBR forecast that VED will raise £8.3 billion in 2024-25. Revenue from motoring taxes helps to fund vital public services and infrastructure, including investment in roads and transport. Funding is distributed to local authorities as part of the Spending Review process.

The Government is going well beyond its promise to fix an additional one million potholes per year, by providing a £500 million cash increase on 2024/25 local roads maintenance baseline funding. This will be enough to fix the equivalent of more than seven million extra potholes in 2025/26.

As with all taxes, the Government welcomes representations on how the tax system can be improved. The Chancellor makes decisions on tax policy at fiscal events in the context of the public finances.