Recommendation 8

The Department acknowledged that setting out clearly who is accountable for local roads is very difficult, as it is a ‘mixed market’ of central and local government accountabilities. The Department told us that local authorities have the statutory responsibility to maintain local roads and that it only funds a part of what they spend on local road maintenance. It recognised that national government also has a responsibility for the overall state of local roads, but the Department saw this to be around allocating national funding, for ensuring it has appropriate data and ‘knowing what’s going on’.12 The Department also told us that it is working closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on the future accountability framework between central and local government in the context of integrated funding settlements for local government.13 The Department’s knowledge of the condition of local roads