Economic, Environmental and Social Impacts of Changes in Maintenance Spend on Local Roads in Scotland

Appendix E Refinement of Funding Scenarios

Figure E.1 shows the results of the analysis of budget reductions based on refinement to the funding Scenarios described in Section 5. The following points should be noted:

• The quantified economic analysis of carriageway conditions is based on 2007/08 structural maintenance budgets indexed to +/10 prices. However, the overall budgets provided for the Audit Scotland assessment have been used for the scenario refinement and these are based on Local Authority outturn costs in 2009/10. It is likely that the structural maintenance outturn costs in 2009/10 for each Authority is not the same as their 2007/08 budgets prices indexed to 2009/10. However, it was considered that the results of the refinement analysis of the entire Local Authority network would still be broadly applicable to identify the range of expected expenditure cuts on structural maintenance.
• Structural maintenance might include expenditure on carriageways, footways and cycle-tracks or structures. Returns from 8 Authorities (not the 8 included in the study sample) show that the average ratio of carriageway to non-carriageway was around 95% to 5%. There is variation across Authorities with regard to itemising expenditure and it is likely that structural maintenance of non-carriageways is often captured in other budget heads. The results adopted for use in the analysis are based on the sample returns from 8 Authorities (i.e. assuming 95% is carriageway maintenance).
• Assessment of the contribution of New Road Schemes to the different outcomes is difficult. An asset management perspective of maintaining existing assets before constructing new assets might be that all new road expenditure should be ceased should funding be constrained to the extent of the given scenarios. However, such a perspective needs to be balanced against the realities of political drivers for capital projects, their contribution to key outcomes and existing commitments. A balance of these different issues has been adopted.
• The review is not addressing winter maintenance. However, assumptions have had to be made in order to assess the likely impact of budget reductions. The analysis shows that winter maintenance remains fairly well protected but will still suffer some reductions which are considered reasonable.

Figure E.1 Subjective analysis of local road spending cuts by activity