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 conventional (a) pothole repair and (b) resurfacing techniques on levels of carbon emissions.

The Government takes the condition of local roads very seriously and is determined to support local highway authorities in adopting new and innovative technologies to maintain and improve their highway networks in a way that is cost effective and reduces carbon impacts.

The Department has funded Live Labs 2, a three-year, £30 million programme designed to support the local highways sector to adopt innovation and reduce its carbon impacts. Projects funded under the programme include the trialling and demonstration of sustainable materials and processes and the creation of toolkits and databases so that all local highway authorities can access findings and lessons learned from the programme.

The Department is also supporting a new Carbon Leadership Programme, which will support local highway authorities in benchmarking the carbon intensity of their operations and gain insights into actions they could take to reduce carbon emissions.

Where road and pothole repair forms part of a capital investment project, the Department requires a carbon management plan (CMP) (in line with the Department’s policies for retained schemes) which would include a comprehensive whole life carbon assessment, and a plan to reduce carbon across the project lifecycle in line with PAS2080 principles.