| Year | Capital allocated by DfT (£,000s) | Capital spend (£,000s) | Revenue spend (£,000s) | Estimate of % spent on preventative maintenance | Estimate of % spent on reactive maintenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025/26 (projected) | £83,640 | £83,166 | £31,183 | 90% | 10% |
| 2024/25 | £60,876 | £74,523 | £31,386 | 89% | 11% |
| 2023/24 | £68,877 | £70,658 | £29,179 | 89% | 11% |
| 2022/23 | £52,823 | £57,096 | £25,424 | 92% | 8% |
| 2021/22 | £53,323 | £65,291 | £25,559 | 94% | 6% |
| 2020/21 | £75,001 | £69,247 | £25,935 | 95% | 5% |
* In relation to the table, reactive maintenance includes: safety defects, incident reaction and emergencies. Everything else is considered as preventive maintenance.
Additional information on spending
Highway maintenance funding is either a capital or a revenue allocation.
Capital expenditure reflects investment in an asset and is defined as ‘expenditure which adds to, and not merely maintains, the value of a fixed asset.’ Highway works eligible for capital funding include activities that extend the life of the asset, such as resurfacing schemes
Revenue expenditure covers day to day expenditure and income, including works which maintain, rather than increase, the value of a fixed asset. Some example of revenue items are works involving repair of safety defects, minor drainage repairs, grass cutting and winter maintenance.
Highway maintenance activities can be split into either preventative or reactive maintenance.
Preventative maintenance involves inspections, minor repairs, and surface treatments designed to slow deterioration and extend its function. This includes applying protective road surfaces and addressing drainage issues to prevent more severe damage.
Reactive maintenance involves responding to defects, such as potholes, surface failures, and structural weaknesses in order to maintain road safety and usability.
There is a tension between preventing future problems and addressing the problems that are affecting residents today, but as far as possible, the council follows national guidance and therefore seeks to prioritise preventative maintenance. This proactive approach delivers better long-term value for money than more disruptive and expensive reactive maintenance.
Despite the Council’s best efforts to invest in a proactive preventative approach, funding levels and impacts such as inflation and climate change has over time meant that the need for reactive maintenance is becoming more prevalent, leading to a rise in unplanned and disruptive maintenance.
Estimate of number of potholes filled
| 2021/22 | 2022/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 | 2024/25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 55,591 | 47,324 | 42,329 | 56,328 | 58,824 |
Devon County Council has a legal duty to keep the highway network safe. Details around how the Council achieves this can be found in the Highway Safety Policy. The policy includes the risk based approach to formal safety inspections, including their frequency dependant on the maintenance category of the highway, and also the defect investigatory criteria that needs to be met to trigger a risk assessment, which in turn will determine a suitable response.
The investigatory criteria used to determine actionable safety defects aligns the Council with many other authorities across the country, and forms part of a wider risk-based approach, ensuring the ongoing safety and accessibility of the network. Further information on the Council’s approach to potholes can be found in the answers to some frequently asked questions.
These figures above represent pothole defects passed to Devon County Council’s term maintenance contractor for repair, with a completion date falling within each financial year. The Council’s pothole repairs are categorised according by size of repair required to support operational efficiency and scheduling, ranging from regular potholes (up to 1sqm), pothole patches (1sqm-4sqm) and large pothole patches (4sqm+). As well as safety defects, the numbers will also contain non-safety or serviceability pothole defects that have been repaired.