Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps her Department is taking to improve the (a) accessibility and (b) maintenance of rural roads.

This Government takes the accessibility and condition of both rural and urban roads very seriously and is determined to help local authorities tackle the maintenance backlog that results from years of underinvestment by the previous Government.

The Government has announced a highway maintenance funding uplift of £500 million for the 2025/26 financial year to help local authorities in rural and urban areas to carry out their highway maintenance responsibilities. Dorset County Council is set to receive over £25 million, an increase of over 35% from the current financial year. It is up to each authority to decide how much of this it spends on its rural roads, based on local needs and priorities.

The Department also provides Integrated Transport Block funding to local authorities to allow them to carry out accessibility and other improvements to roads in rural and urban areas and hopes to confirm 2025/26 allocations shortly. Active Travel England has also recently announced active travel funding allocations to authorities for 2024/25 and 2025/26 which will allow them to improve the accessibility of footways in both rural and urban areas, and Dorset will receive around £1 million of this funding.