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Draft business plan and budget proposals for significant investment in highways supported by committee

21 January 2025

Draft business plan and budget proposals that would see the council build on the investment in highways, were scrutinised and supported by a majority of Highways and Transport committee members – who today (Tuesday, 21 January) put forward their views for consideration by the Strategy, Resources and Performance committee on 28 January.

The Highways and Transport committee has a significant role in ensuring the highway is well maintained and that ‘travel across the county is safer and more environmentally sustainable’. This forms part of our Strategic Framework and the council’s approach for achieving the vision of a greener, fairer and more caring Cambridgeshire.

This is why, the proposed business plan includes investment of more than £56million in highways maintenance to tackle the significant backlog of repairs and resident concerns. This includes:

  • £14.5m in revenue for the day-to-day management of the highway, this includes an additional £550k to be invested in the re-design of the highways maintenance and management function to improve the customer experience. Also, an additional £450k to improve the daily delivery of drainage, flood resilience, tree, vegetation and weed management
  • £42m of capital investment which includes an additional £20million in planned capital maintenance of the highway including roads, pavements, drainage, bridges, safety barriers, traffic signals, public rights of way and cycleways.

Furthermore, since the publication of the draft business plan, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority has confirmed that additional grant funding of £8.1m has been allocated to Cambridgeshire highways which will be added to the investment programme for 25/26. The committee recommended the following priorities for this extra investment: bus shelters, increase in local highways initiatives, trees, drains, Active Travel, soil impacted roads, road markings, pothole management and streetlighting. The committee also sought assurance regarding additional capacity for highways development management. A recommendation will be discussed at the Highways and Transport Committee in March.

As well as significant investment, other proposals include:

  • Generation of income through an increase in fees and demand for Streetworks permits, parking and for developers to ensure the council is managing the implications economic growth will have on the highway
  • Measures to make highways delivery more efficient and effective, with £500k worth of savings working with our highway’s contractors and investing £6million in streetlighting to cut its own energy costs through installing LED bulbs.

At its meeting in December, members of the Strategy, Resources and Performance Committee began debating the draft business plan and budget. This plan has now been scrutinised by the Highways and Transport committee. The feedback from all the council’s January policy and service committees, as well as feedback from our online public consultation (Business Plan and Budget 2025-26 Consultation Survey | Cambridgeshire County Council) and the views of Town and Parish Councils, other local and public authorities, business representatives and trade unions will be debated again by the Strategy, Resources and Performance committee when it meets in January. This committee will then put forward the final draft business plan and budget for debate and decision at the Full Council meeting on 11 February.

Cambridgeshire County Council’s 2025/26 business plan and budget will identify where to spend more than £1billion to deliver services and support for residents and communities across the county. Rising demand for these services, along with the increased costs and changes from government, continues to impact the council’s available funding. For 2025/26 we have a budget gap of £34.2 million that we need to address. That means we must also continue to make difficult choices about levels of council tax and where we can generate additional income, as well as where we invest and where we make savings.

Cllr Alex Beckett, Chair of the Highways and Transport Committee at Cambridgeshire County Council, said: “We recognise the financial challenges that we are facing as a county, but highways have an impact on all our lives, so it’s important we continue to create better, safer and more sustainable journeys.

“Highways is responsible for looking after around 5,000 miles of roads, footpaths and cycleways across the county – that’s a distance roughly equivalent to running around the entire coast of Britain. Not to mention more than 1,000 bridges, almost 110,000 drains and each year we repair around 60,000 potholes. Historically, we’ve seen underinvestment in our highway’s maintenance, this has left us with a bill well in excess of £600m to bring our network up to the maintenance standard we'd all like and expect. We need to change that, we started the journey last year by nearly doubling our highway maintenance budget and today we’re proposing to keep going and invest further.

“Running alongside this investment is an improvement programme focused on how we deliver our highways services – including customer experience, replacing our 20-year-old asset management system where people log faults and a procurement strategy to ensure we’re achieving best value for all of us across the county.

“Although we do not receive sufficient funding from Government to meet the needs of the growing population in Cambridgeshire, we are committed to ensuring the council delivers value for money in the services it provides. That is why the majority of this committee supports the proposals today.”

The views of all policy and service committees, and the views of residents, partners and business representatives, will be put before the Strategy, Resources & Performance Committee on 28 January so it can make a final recommendation on the business plan and budget to Full Council, which meets to debate and agree this plan on 11 February.

For more information on the council’s proposals for the coming year visit - County Council to spend more than £1billion across Cambridgeshire in the coming year | Cambridgeshire County Council