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How we are improving highways maintenance

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We are committed to improving the condition of Cambridgeshire’s highways enabling better and safer journeys for those who live, work, or visit our county.

We recognise that Cambridgeshire's residents care deeply about the condition of the highways network, and we are committed to delivering highway maintenance activities and services to a high standard.

Over the past two years, we have made the biggest investment in the highways network in over a decade, providing £43 million of additional funding for highways maintenance.

We have also allocated a further £20m for 2026/27 to help us continue our mission to improve the overall condition of the network year-on-year.

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Our priorities

Value for money

The amount of funding we have to spend each year is limited. How and where we spend the highways maintenance budget is important. We have processes to prioritise how we invest the highways maintenance budget in the most efficient and cost-effective way. Ensuring we maximise every pound we spend.

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Community focussed

We deliver highway maintenance services on behalf of residents. We are committed to ensuring services are rooted in communities and respond to local needs effectively and efficiently.

a group of people standing

Customer experience

How we communicate is an important part of delivering a positive customer experience. Highway maintenance work can cause disruption so we inform communities when work is taking place, via social media, digital maps and roadside signage. We are making progress on improving customer experience to make sure we communicate openly and transparently with everyone who uses Cambridgeshire's highways network.

three people with speech bubbles above head

Continuous improvement

The needs of our communities and demands on the highways network are constantly changing. It is important we keep looking into the future and planning. We are reviewing our existing highway contracts and services and looking ahead to how highway maintenance will be delivered in future.

blue line drawing of person carrying an arrow pointing forward

Our highways network

The highways network we maintain includes roads, footways, and cycleways, as well as other highways assets.

To see the network in kilometres and by number of assets, please click the plus + sign. To close, please click the minus – sign.

Highway, footways and cycleways type Length in kilometres (km)
A road 517
B and C road 1,706
U road 2,296
Total roads 4,159
Footways 2,710
Other public rights of way 3,244
Cycleways 41
Asset How many
Road, pedestrian, and cycleway bridges 1,200
Public right of way bridges 2,200
Other structures, including underpasses, subways, and retaining walls 85
Streetlights and illuminated signs/bollards 60,000
Zebra pedestrian crossings 145
Sets of traffic signalised junctions 192
Traffic light-controlled crossings 228
Electronic information and variable messaging signs and other traffic management assets 112
Drainage gullies, highway drains, sewers, soakaways, and other drainage infrastructure More than 115,000
Highway trees 87,000
Length of grass verges 4,400km
Road safety fencing and pedestrian guard rails More than 100km
Public rights of ways assets including gates, stiles, and signs More than 7,000

Progress made in 2024/25

In the budget year 2024/25 we spent £58 million on highways maintenance county-wide. It is important to show you where your money is spent. Here is a selection of improvements we made.

Use the forward and back arrows on the side of the images below.

Image shows a road resurfacing machine and text says: 145km of road resurfaced across 166 sites county-wide, spend of £30 million
145km of road resurfaced across 166 sites county-wide, spend of £30 million.

What to expect in 2025/26

We are building on last year's record investment by investing more than £73m for highways maintenance in 2025/26.

This includes over £59m of capital funding, of which £20m is from the council's reserve funds.

To see how funding has been allocated, please click the plus + sign. To close, please click the minus – sign.

The table below shows how the £59m of capital funding has been allocated.

Asset type Funding allocation amount
Carriageway structural and preventative work £30,780,300
Footway and cycleway structural and preventative work £7,200,000
A14 detrunking fund £6,488,000
Drainage and resilience work £4,000,000
Bridge strengthening work £3,137,700
Traffic signals and management £2,375,400
Local improvement fund £1,500,000
Active travel network maintenance £1,000,000
Public rights of way £735,000
Enabling resources, future design and technology £700,000
Locally determined minor capital maintenance works £515,600
Signs and lines £500,000
Safety fencing £400,000
Total £59,332,000

Visit our capital maintenance programme pages to find out more about our upcoming work in 2025/26 and when individual projects are being delivered.

Innovation and best practice

We are continually working to lead best practice and deliver innovation and efficiency. Find out more below about how we are innovating to decarbonise our maintenance operations and to reduce the impact of a changing climate. We are also one of the first authorities to use data to prioritise how we select capital funded projects.

To expand and view further information, please click the plus + sign. To close, please click the minus – sign.

Last year, we switched to using a cold laid recycled asphalt material instead of traditional hot asphalt material across our active travel network. In total we laid 2,000 tonnes of material.

This enabled us to:

  • Reduce health and safety risks linked to working with hot products.
  • Decrease the noise pollution and vibration linked to our work, by reducing the number of site deliveries.
  • Work more efficiently, by increasing the time we had to lay the material.
  • Significantly reduce the amount of carbon per tonne used when compared to traditional asphalt material.

Doing this resulted in a total carbon saving of 110 tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent and delivered a cost saving of 15%, compared to regular asphalt. This means we can do more repairs with the same amount of funding.

For several years, we have been leading the way in sustainable construction practises when rebuilding Cambridgeshire’s roads.

The process we use involves recycling existing material into the lower layers of the new road. Doing this has significant cost and carbon savings.

We use performance-enhancing grids when doing this to further extend the life of the road and address issues caused by soils underneath the road moving.

Last year we recycled 41,000 tonnes of material, saving 305 tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent.

We have also been using materials supplied at a lower temperature than conventional materials and with an increased percentage of recycled aggregate included.

This is known as a warm mix product.

Using warm mix product across our road resurfacing programmes has both quality and carbon reduction advantages.

From a quality point of view, heating the material to a lower temperature means the road is not as brittle. From a carbon saving perspective, we have saved 340 tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent.

Finally, we have trialled the use of low carbon cements within our road reconstruction projects.

This is a process whereby the existing road is broken down, degraded, and mixed with cement to provide the new road material.

Traditionally, conventional cement has been used when following this process but this comes at a high carbon cost.

We switched to low carbon cement across several of our sites in 2024/25 and this enabled us to save 320 tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent.

Building on the successes above, we have recently secured £1.5 million from the Peterborough and Cambridge Combined Authority (CPCA) to design and deliver a series of soil affected road repair trials.

This gives us the opportunity to find potential solutions and build a case for further investment from central government that is data led.

Tackling this issue is critical in Cambridgeshire since 40% of our road network is classed as soil affected and deteriorates at a much faster rate than traditional roads. It has been estimated that the county’s soil affected roads will require in excess of a further £530m in funding to address this issue. 

As a result, a greater proportion of highways maintenance funding goes on maintaining these routes, and this in turn impacts how much we can spend across the rest of our network.

We are one of the first local authorities to develop an Active Travel Hierarchy to reflect how important well-maintained routes are for those walking, wheeling, and cycling.

Specific active travel hierarchies are not in widespread use by local highways authorities for maintenance activities and Cambridgeshire is an early adopter of their use to support active travel.

Our proposed active travel network will help ensure that the county’s highways are maintained with due regard to the needs of active travel and non-motorised users of the network.

The hierarchy will be used to prioritise capital maintenance schemes by assigning scores to routes that are ranked higher in the hierarchy.

This will build on the adoption of Cambridgeshire's Active Travel Strategy

You can find out more about the active travel hierarchy by viewing the 4 March 2025 Highways and Transport Committee meeting agenda item: Active Travel Hierarchy - adoption of completed Hierarchy (opens as pdf on cambridgeshire.cmis.uk.com).

Supporting appendices can be accessed by the following links. These open on website cambridgeshire.cmis.uk.com.

How we spend our funding is important. We have a limited amount each year and it is vital  to spend this is the most efficient and effective way we can.

To do so, we are one of the first authorities to develop a method of prioritising projects for capital funding.

This allows us to follow an objective, data-led approach when identifying new projects for capital maintenance.

These projects then form the basis of our capital maintenance and improvement programme, which goes before our Highways and Transport Committee in March each year.

You can find out more about this innovative approach by viewing the 3 December 2024 Highways and Transport Committee meeting agenda item: Prioritisation of the Highways Capital Programme (opens as pdf on cambridgeshire.cmis.uk.com).

Supporting appendices can be accessed by the following links. These open on website cambridgeshire.cmis.uk.com.

The council's Highway Operational Standards (opens as pdf) sets out how we will manage and maintain the highways.

It brings together the County Council Corporate Business Plan and the Combined Authority’s Local Transport Plan objectives.

We apply the principles of asset management to ensure we meet the requirements of our communities and users and also deliver value for money.

We tailor our approach to meet the needs of Cambridgeshire, whilst also recognising national best practice.

By doing so, we take into account issues such as sustainability and growth pressures.

Our operational standards:

  • Define affordable highway service standards and how these will be operationalised by our teams.
  • Publish our investment and maintenance strategies, linked to lifecycle planning for key highway asset groups.
  • Improve the way in which our highway is managed and maintained, making use of innovation and digitisation wherever possible.
  • Enable us to ensure value for money through efficient and effective highway service provision by following a data led approach to highway maintenance where appropriate.

The standards are informed by the national Code of Practice (CoP) 'Well Managed Highway Infrastructure' (opens as pdf on ciht.org.uk).

The code contains fewer prescriptive standards than the previous version and promotes a more risk-based approach. Our standards reflect the authority’s implementation of the key elements of this code.

We are currently reviewing our Highways Operational Standards. This review will be completed later this year and changes implemented soon after. This is part of our commitment to continuous improvement and learning.

Public satisfaction survey participation

We continue to take part in the annual National Highways and Transport (NHT) Public Satisfaction Survey. The survey collects views on, and satisfaction with, highway and transport services. Covering topics from the condition of roads and footpaths to public transport and the quality of cycling facilities.

NHT survey results are compared across England and Scotland. We are one of 142 local authorities that have taken part over the past 11 years, contributing to the sectors largest local authority membership of any benchmarking network.

Unlike many other authorities who participate in the survey Cambridgeshire has a mayoral authority, the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA), who are the lead authority for public transport. This means that different organisations within Cambridgeshire have an influence over the survey's outcome.

We use the results to identify what is going well, where improvements can be made, and understand the areas our residents would like prioritised.

Results for 2025

Overall, our score remains the same as last year, but we have made significant improvements across the highways maintenance category in the following areas: 

  • Condition of pavement
  • Overgrown footpaths and bridleways
  • Advanced warning of roadworks
  • Number of potholes repaired
  • Action to repair local roads
  • Weed killing
  • Maintenance of highway verges/trees/shrubs
  • Condition of road surfaces
  • Cuts back overgrown hedges
  • Highway maintenance

In key areas where can do better, including conditions of cycle routes, staff response times, and road safety education, we will use the results to drive targeted improvements.

A link to the full survey results will be added to this webpage.

Transparent reporting of highways maintenance

The Department for Transport (DfT) requires us to publish a yearly report that details our highway maintenance activities and investment plans across key areas.

This report details:

  • How much funding has been allocated for highway maintenance activities
  • The condition of our local roads
  • Our plans and strategies
  • Our approach to climate change, resilience, and adaptation
  • How we manage road works

A copy of this report, providing a detailed breakdown of the headline figures for 2025/26 can be found below.

Local highways maintenance transparency report 2025-26 for Cambridgeshire County Council785KB–pdf
Size: 785KBFile format: pdf

A copy of our letter to the Department for Transport can be seen below, this details how we are meeting best practice criteria and highlights the unique local issues related to soil affected roads that the county must maintain.

Appendix D - Response Letter - DFT Incentive Fund291KB–pdf
Size: 291KBFile format: pdf

Key highlights

  • Over the last five years, we have repaired an average of 55,400 individual potholes every year.
  • Since 2023/24 the amount of capital funding we spend on highway maintenance has increased by £35m, from £24m to £59m.
  • Often for reasons outside our control, such as changing climate and rising demand, the overall condition of our road network has deteriorated over the last five years. This is why we are investing more of the council's reserve funds in highways maintenance and lobbying central government for further funding. The soil affected roads in Cambridgeshire put unique financial pressures on our overall highways maintenance budget.
  • We are committed to managing roadworks as efficiently and effectively as possible, to reduce disruption to highway users. We do so through the use of digital tools and working collaboratively to plan and coordinate. 
  • It is our priority to ensure that our communities and visitors to the county are well informed about what is happening on our network, and when, so they can plan their journeys.