"That's never going to be accepted": Mayor says councillor's request for extra £19m for roads won't happen
It is estimated that Nottinghamshire needs £83m to maintain its roads in their current state for the next year – £35m more than it has been afforded by the East Midlands Combined Council Authority (EMCCA)
But East Midlands mayor Claire Ward (Lab), says a Nottinghamshire county councillor’s request for all of her authority’s spare money to go to the authority for road maintenance was ‘never going to be accepted by anyone’.
Coun Bert Bingham (Ref), who deals with transport for the council, said at a meeting of the EMCCA’s transport committee in January that Nottinghamshire was subject to ‘underfunding’ and a ‘lack of representation’.
It was after the county was allocated £47m by EMCCA for highways in the 2026-2027 financial year – some £35m short of the amount it is estimated the authority needs to even just maintain the roads in their current state, never mind improve them.
Coun Bingham proposed that, because of this, a figure of around £18.5m that EMCCA had yet to allocate be given to the county council to make up the shortfall.
But when asked about this in a conversation with the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Ms Ward said the suggestion was ‘never going to be accepted by anyone else’.
She said: “That was never going to be accepted by anyone else, simply because the fact that they’ve got a greater degree – they would argue – of highways maintenance needs which, I’m afraid, is the responsibility of the last Conservative Government and Conservative council.
“It’s now up to the new leadership to accept that there is more money coming – which there is – for potholes and for highways maintenance and to make sure that money is used well and the roads are fixed for the long term.
“We are in this situation not because of EMCCA funding in the last year but because of successive years of underfunding into our councils and highways.
"That’s the reality of the situation we’re trying to resolve.”
At the members last month, members voted to allocate a total of £120m to Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Derby and Derbyshire roads for the 2026-2027 financial year.
This was to be split between the councils based on a formula created by the Government’s Department for Transport (DfT), which takes into account things like the size of roads and the number of streetlights in each area.
Nottinghamshire will get £47m, Derbyshire will get £58m and Nottingham and Derby city councils will both get £8m each.
It is estimated that Derbyshire needs £53m and Derby and Nottingham both need around £8m to keep their roads in the state they are in currently.
But Nottinghamshire is estimated to need a whopping £82m – meaning that its 2026-27 settlement is the only one that does not meet its maintenance requirement.
Also being discussed at the meeting was the split of a further £22m for specific road projects, with Nottinghamshire’s including the A614/A6097 improvements and a road safety programme within the county.
But Coun Bingham pointed out that Nottinghamshire was only being afforded 19 per cent of one funding pot and 12 per cent of another in this regard.
He said: “We note that of the four constituent authorities, we are the only ones allocated less than their maintenance requirement.
“We don’t want to take anything away from the other authorities – we recognise the importance of them being able to clear their backlog.
“But we note the £18.5m still unallocated and given our lack of representation and underfunding, our very clear expectation is that all remaining unallocated funds will be added to further bolster our maintenance funding and close the gap with our estimated need.”
In January, Nottinghamshire was given an ‘amber’ overall score, on a red-amber-green scale, by the DfT on its Local Road Maintenance Ratings table for 2025-26.
The county scored green for spending but amber for condition and wider best practice.
Coun Bingham said the extra money would target work that would ‘positively impact the assessment criteria’ for the rating.
He noted that even with the extra £18.5m, Nottinghamshire would still be £22m short of what it needs.
Responding, EMCCA’s head of transport investment Alex Linton explained that the allocation wasn’t based on how much each council was estimated to need for maintaining their highways in their current state, but instead on maintaining a year-on-year position so that no authority is receiving less than it did in the previous year.
And Ms Ward told the LDRS: “I will work with Reform in providing further funding but then they need to deliver.
"I will say that to the cities led by Labour as well – it’s up to them to deliver.
"The state of the current highways is not my fault, I’m not responsible for highway maintenance.
"But we provided a 40 per cent funding increase last year and it’s a 60 per cent increase this year and that will be sustained for the next three years.
“So they’ve got plenty of time to plan their maintenance and they have the money to be able to invest into it.
"What they should be doing is working together across the region to explore best practice.
"If one of the councils is doing really well in innovation and using new techniques or new materials then let’s see if the rest of them can learn from it.”