Local Highway Maintenance Transparency Report 2025 - 2026

Road condition assessments on the local classified road network in England are currently made predominantly using surface condition assessment for the national network of roads (SCANNER) laser-based technology.

The unclassified highway network is surveyed using a coarse visual or manual survey with trained inspectors. (CVI)

A number of parameters measured in these surveys are used to produce a road condition indicator which is categorised into three condition categories:

• Green - no further investigation or treatment required
• Amber - maintenance may be required soon
• Red - should be considered for maintenance

A typical example is shown on figure 1.

Surveys are carried out annually in Gateshead across the network and the results are published both by the DfT and by the council on their website. The survey data is downloaded onto the council's asset management software application and used to direct the annual highway maintenance programmes.  

Figure 1 Highway condition 

3.1 Situation in Gateshead

The A, B and C roads in Gateshead are in a good condition; ranked in the highest road condition quartile of local highway authorities across the country. As an authority we can keep on top of repairs on these roads using capital planned maintenance budgets and targeted interventions using the latest asset management software to model current and future life expectancy.

The condition of the unclassified network (residential and industrial estates) is poor however with a backlog of 123 km in need of repair (Table 3.1). We have targeted considerable resources using different methods and techniques in the last three years to this area, the backlog of unclassified roads requiring repair has tended to remain constant at around 20% of the unclassified network indicating the extent of the problem however the latest results show an improvement for the first time in seven years.  

As our neighbouring authorities have similar backlog issues on their unclassified roads the issue has been raised with the North East Combined Authority and is flagged up in the regional Transport Asset Management Plan. We continue to target the unclassified network as shown in (Table 2.2) with almost 60 % of spend in that area but annually this is still less than 10 km of the 123 km estimated backlog.

Longer term extra capital funding has been provided by government in 2023 to 2024 and onwards to 2027 including the additional Network North funding (from the cancelled HS2 project) and Pothole funding. The regional TAMP also provides certainty of funding and it is hoped this will draw the condition indicator down and away from the existing "steady state".

Table 3.1 Percentage of road network that should be considered for maintenance in Gateshead

Table 3.2 Road condition categories by year 

3.2 Gateshead's unclassified network

The unclassified network makes up over 75 % of the total highway network at 682 km and although very urban in nature in the east and centre of Gateshead, in the west it is very rural with country lanes and some steep inclines to the Derwent and Team river valleys.

This has led to different issues arising in certain areas although the western unclassified network has lower volumes of traffic upon it the roads are more susceptible to the freeze thaw process and are not always suitable for thin- surfacing products which would be appropriate on housing estates in the built-up areas. Our strategy has been to use thin surfacing on unclassified urban roads with low traffic volumes identified as red on the CVI surveys but also with high volumes of reactive maintenance repairs. In the rural west some repairs have had to be more extensive although we have had success with jet patching in certain areas.

The council has provided extra funding to address the backlog of works on the unclassified network with prudential borrowing over the last four years to help the situation, but we would need to invest much greater funding to begin to drive down the backlog of works accrued on the unclassified network. 

Figure 3.2 Unclassified network condition Winlaton Gateshead 2024

Green = up to standard

Red = work potentially required