Council Leader Says Fixing All County Roads Is ‘Almost Impossible’ Amid £800m Backlog

The leader of Cambridgeshire County Council has acknowledged that bringing all of the county’s roads up to a good standard would be “pretty much impossible” under current funding arrangements, as the authority grapples with an estimated £800 million maintenance backlog.

The council is responsible for maintaining around 4,600km (2,858 miles) of roads, many of which are classed as “soil-affected” because they were built on peat. These roads are prone to buckling and deterioration, with repairs costing up to four times more than work on standard road surfaces.

Under current plans, the council has proposed allocating £58 million for planned highways maintenance in 2026-27, which would address just over 7% of the overall backlog.

Speaking ahead of a full council budget meeting on Tuesday, Liberal Democrat leader Lucy Nethsingha said the situation was unacceptable for residents but difficult to resolve without additional support.

She said that, given existing budgets, restoring every road in Cambridgeshire to a good condition at the same time was unrealistic. However, she stressed the authority was not abandoning the ambition altogether.

“We are absolutely not giving up,” she said, adding that the council was continuing to lobby central government and explore ways to manage the “astonishingly expensive” challenge posed by soil-affected roads, which she said often require complete reconstruction rather than patch repairs.

Cambridgeshire County Council has repeatedly called on the government to provide extra funding to deal specifically with these roads. In response, the Department for Transport has previously said it is investing £188 million across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough over the next four years to help councils resurface roads and tackle potholes.

The county has recently received an “amber” rating under a new national traffic-light system designed to show drivers how effectively local authorities in England are dealing with road conditions and pothole repairs.