National Statistics

From GPG

The Performance of Local Highway Authorities

In 2010, IPROW initiated a new national survey of highway authorities, supported by ADEPT, which covered staffing, budgets, and performance. The results are available to participating authorities only and have not been openly published. It is intended to repeat the survey annually to build up a continuing national dataset.

Contents 1 The Performance of Local Highway Authorities 1.1 Staffing levels 1.2 Volunteer input 1.3 Financial input 1.4 Overall resources

CSS carried out a survey on behalf of the CSS Countryside Working Group and the Countryside Agency in 2003/4 to monitor the performance of local highway authorities' public rights of way work. The full report is available – the summary results are given here. Please note that due to the low level of responses to the survey some caution is required when using the data.

Staffing levels

• it is estimated that 1350 full time equivalent staff were working on rights of way in England in 2003/04
• authorities employed, on average, over twice the number of staff on the maintenance of the network as they did on work relating to the Definitive Map
• staffing levels fell in 2001/02, but subsequently increased on average by 7.5% pa and by 2004 stood over 30% above 1999/2000 levels
• each member of staff involved in maintenance work in a county council in 2004 was nominally responsible for 382km of rights of way, a reduction of some 18% since 1999/2000

Volunteer input

• it is estimated that volunteers contributed 88,400 work-days in 2003/04 – a cash equivalent of some £4.4m
• 70% of this input went towards maintenance functions, with Definitive Map work benefiting from less than 1% of the total
• volunteer input had risen by 47% between 1999 and 2004, despite falls between 2000 and 2002

Financial input

• it is estimated that expenditure on public rights of way in England stood at £50.6m in 2003/04
• 49% of this sum was spent on maintenance, with 14% on the Definitive Map and 11% on development and promotion
• the average expenditure on maintaining the network stood at £130/km in 2003/04
• since 1999/2000, the estimated national expenditure on the public rights of way network had increased by approximately 55%
• overall, 20% of expenditure came as income from external sources.

Overall resources

• overall it is estimated that there has been a 123% (£30.4m) increase in rights of way resources (financial and costed voluntary) between 1990 and 2004, with a 54% (£19.2m) increase since 1999/2000
• the rate of increase showed a marked rise since 2000, reaching almost 18% between 2002/03 and 2003/04