After years of ‘managed decline’ of the borough’s roads, Greenwich Council is suddenly boasting of investing in repairing potholes. This is solely thanks to the Labour Government’s recent allocation of funds in a desperate attempt to improve their (lack of) popularity. However, no plan as to how these funds will be allocated has yet been published by a somewhat reluctant Greenwich Council.
Greenwich Council’s ‘managed decline’ of our roads
In 2022 Greenwich Council admitted to a policy of ‘managed decline’ of the borough’s roads which was defined in a Council report as “There is planned maintenance, but repair and renewal is below the level needed to maintain the current level of service” with the expectation this would lead to a decline in the road condition and repairs becoming purely reactive leading to increasing safety worries and costs. To help remedy this dire state of affairs, Council Officers aimed to produce a plan to sort out the potholes and road maintenance problems (a Highways Infrastructure Asset Management Plan or HIAMP) but in 2022, 2023 and 2024 it was reported that a lack of resources had led to a delay in producing the plan. Eventually, the Council committed to producing a HIAMP by March 2025 but nothing has yet been published despite transparency being a key reason for producing it. The fact is that it hasn’t been given any priority.
A section from the September 2023 Regeneration, Transport and Culture Scrutiny Panel report describing the policy of managed decline of Greenwich Borough’s roads.
The real reason for this poor state of affairs
The reason why motorists, and their passengers, suffer so much in Greenwich is that the leadership within the Labour Council simply does not care. Key members of the Labour Council group and leadership are vehemently anti-motorist and have adopted policies such as a target 45% reduction in car use by 2030 which is an impossible dream requiring the majority of the Borough’s residents to suffer from pernicious measures like CPZs, LTNs, increased parking charges and reduced parking spaces amongst others.
Greenwich Council has been underspending on road maintenance
In December Greenwich Council published a report admitting that compared to other London boroughs “Royal Borough of Greenwich has one of the lowest capital carriageway maintenance budgets at £800k/year, or ~£1,700/km across its 483km carriageway network”. The report states that the average spend across London is ~£6,400/km meaning Greenwich Council is spending as little as a quarter of a normal London borough – no wonder there are so many potholes, uneven pavements and damaged surfaces on our roads. Indeed, research by Accident Claims Advice has found that Greenwich Council had 81 claims against it for damage caused by potholes between 2022 and 2024 generating more waste of Council funds processing these claims.
Where will Greenwich Council spend the government money?
Successive governments have allocated money to Councils specifically to spend on repairing potholes. However, without a plan analysing where the worst potholes are or where it might be best to spend these funds Greenwich Council’s response has been both sporadic and haphazard. Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Government awarded Greenwich £250,000 each year between 2023-2025 with another £7.8m earmarked for the following decade. Activity by Conservative activists in Eltham seems to have contributed to the initial tranche being spent in Elibank Road, Glenesk Road and Mayday Gardens followed by the majority being allocated to the ever-problematic Creek Road in West Greenwich. No plans have been published for the remaining funds provided by the Conservative Government, but in the autumn statement, the Labour Government announced Greenwich Council would receive £813,000 for highways maintenance in the year 2025-26. It isn’t clear whether this is in addition to the funds allocated by Rishi Sunak’s government but, assuming that it is, then the Council’s boast of £1.6m extra spending on road maintenance has come almost entirely from central government funding.
Cllr Charlie Davis has been pushing the Council to repair certain roads in Eltham in this case was informed they weren’t bad enough for work to be undertaken.
A road to nowhere?
But regardless of where the funds have come from the question remains where will the £1.6m for road maintenance and pothole repair be spent? and will it be spent wisely or effectively? I suspect the answer is that the Labour Councillors genuinely don’t know. The plan that this Labour Council have been promising for years has still not been published and so it may well be that the money will be allocated on a reactive basis as it has been in previous years. This means those who shout the loudest will probably get the benefit!
So the logical conclusion is that we should all write to our Councillors and demand that the worst potholes, damaged road surfaces or poorly maintained footpaths be repaired. Without a plan the Councillors will probably get funds on a first come first served basis so please write to your Councillors as soon as possible – you can figure out who your Councillor is here: https://www.writetothem.com/.
If your Councillors don’t respond please contact Cllr Charlie Davis and me (Spencer Drury) at elthammatters@gmail.com and we will follow up on your behalf with the Council directly.