The allocation of funding to roads is a devolved matter. It is for the Northern Ireland Executive to determine how it allocates its capital budget across devolved priorities, including local transport infrastructure.

The Executive has existing capital borrowing powers allowing it to borrow up to £225 million annually to support investment in infrastructure, including roads.

Data on road collisions involving personal injury are reported to the Department by police forces in Great Britain via the STATS19 system. The latest year for which provisional data is available is 2025.

In 2025, 1,556 people were killed and 28,355 people were seriously injured in reported road collisions in Great Britain.

The Department recognises that excessive speed increases both the risk of collisions and the severity of their outcomes. Effective enforcement of speed limits can therefore play an important role in encouraging compliance and improving road safety.

The Department has not made a separate assessment of the effectiveness of speed limit enforcement in isolation. However, the Government’s Road Safety Strategy sets out the role of robust enforcement as part of a wider Safe System approach to reducing deaths and serious injuries on roads in Great Britain.

The Government has confirmed a record £7.3 billion investment into local highways maintenance over the next four years. This multi-year settlement enables local authorities to plan ahead and shift away from expensive, short-term repairs and to instead invest in proactive and preventative maintenance. This record funding includes significant allocations to local authorities across England, including in rural areas, with allocations for each authority available online, at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/highways-maintenance-funding-allocations/highways-maintenance-block-formula-allocations-2026-to-2030.

To support further improvement in the condition of local roads, the Department introduced a new traffic-light rating system for all local highway authorities in England. All authorities are assessed annually and receive a red, amber or green rating based on the condition of their roads, how much they spend to maintain their road, and whether they do so using best practice.

Local authorities can improve their ratings by adopting more best practice in highways maintenance, such as a greater focus on preventative maintenance to avoid potholes from forming in the first place, and by adopting innovative approaches such as those trialled through the Government's £30 million Live Labs 2 programme.

On 7 January 2026, we published our new Road Safety Strategy for Great Britain, setting out our vision for a safer future on our roads for all. The Strategy sets an ambitious target to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured in Great Britain by 65%, and by 70% for children under 16, by 2035.

Local authorities are the main delivery body of road safety. Local authorities have a statutory duty to take steps both to reduce and prevent collisions. In the Department’s Local Transport Plan Guidance we have been clear that we expect Local Authorities to have regard to the Government’s road safety targets.

We provide significant funding for road infrastructure in England, both to local authorities and to National Highways. Road Safety is a crucial consideration in how that money is spent. We will provide £24 billion of capital funding between 2026-27 and 2029-30 to maintain and improve motorways and local roads across the country. This future funding builds upon the record investment of £1.6 billion in local road maintenance for 2025 to 2026, representing a £500 million increase compared to last year. How available resources are deployed, is the responsibility of the relevant local authorities taking into account the specific local problems and demands with which they are faced.

Some road safety matters are devolved to Scotland and Wales, with relevant funding allocated. Matters such as Road safety are devolved to the Northern Ireland Executive. As a result of the decisions made by the Chancellor at the Spring Forecast, the Northern Ireland Executive received an additional £380 million RDEL and £10 million CDEL funding to allocate in a way that aligns with their priorities.

We engage constructively with our counterparts in Scotland, Wales and the Northern Ireland, both at ministerial and official level, on a range of issues including Road Safety.

There are no plans for a designated erosion fund for the safety of coastal roads. Roads policy is a devolved matter, with funding decisions the responsibility of the respective devolved administration. In England, local highway authorities are responsible for managing and maintaining their respective highway networks, including coastal roads, and are best placed to assess local safety risks and determine appropriate measures.

The Department for Transport provides grant funding to highway authorities to help maintain their networks, but decisions on traffic management, maintenance, and resilience measures are for local authorities, taking account of local conditions and priorities.

The Government recognises the pressures faced by households and businesses that rely on road transport, particularly during periods of global volatility which affect fuel prices. That is why the temporary 5p per litre cut to fuel duty has been extended to 31 December 2026, ensuring there will be no increases to fuel duty this year and providing universal support for motorists and other fuel users.

Compared to plans inherited from the previous Government, keeping fuel duty frozen means petrol and diesel will be around 11p per litre cheaper through the rest of 2026, saving the average driver around £120 by the end of the year, with larger savings for Vans (£250) and HGVs (£2,120).

Alongside this universal support, the Government is providing targeted support for sectors most exposed to higher fuel prices, including cutting red diesel by over a third from mid June to support farmers and providing hauliers transporting goods around the country with a 12-month holiday from Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) from 1 July, worth £600 to the typical HGV.

The Department recognises the importance of safety for children near schools and the Road Safety Strategy (published January 2026) sets a goal of reducing the number of children under 16 killed or seriously injured on roads by 70% by 2035 in Great Britain.

Active travel is a devolved matter for national governments. In England, the Department for Transport uses Active Travel England (ATE) to support authorities to develop a wide range walking and cycling schemes. ATE have developed and published specific guidance on how to improve safety around schools through implementation of School Streets.

The Government is providing £626 million to local authorities in England for walking and cycling schemes for 2026/27 onwards across the spending review period, which may also be used for safety measures around schools amongst a range of other measures.

More information on School Streets, the road safety strategy, and available funding can be found at the following links:

• Consolidated Active Travel Fund: final allocations - GOV.UK
• School Streets: how to set up and manage a scheme - GOV.UK
• Road safety strategy - GOV.UK

The Road Safety Strategy, published earlier this year, has also committed to publishing a new edition of the best practice guidance Setting local speed limits - GOV.UK which gives local authorities clearer, more up‑to‑date best‑practice standards.

The Department do not have any plans to use World Wildlife Day to promote driver awareness of wildlife on the roads. A main focus for this Government is to make our roads safer for all users, which will in turn reduce the risk to all animals.

There is a range of traffic signs prescribed in the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 to warn drivers of road safety risks due to wildlife on or near roads. It is for local traffic authorities to determine if such signs are required to address a road safety issue on their roads.

Advice on the use of these signs is given in Chapter 4 of the Traffic Signs Manual, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/traffic-signs-manual

The Department for Transport does not hold information on the number of pothole damage claims in 2025.

The safety of our roads is an absolute priority for this Government.

Local authorities have a range of traffic management measures available to them to help improve safety outside schools including reducing speed limits, traffic calming, and introduction of a School Street where appropriate. On 19 November 2024 Active Travel England and the Department for Transport published joint School Streets Guidance. The guidance is available at School Streets: how to set up and manage a scheme - GOV.UK

This year, the Government made an additional £500 million available for local highway authorities to maintain their highway network, bringing the total to a record investment of nearly £1.6 billion. A quarter of the additional funding is contingent upon local highway authorities complying with certain criteria aimed at driving best practice and continual improvement in highways maintenance.

The Government also supports the rollout of lane rental schemes. This allows highway authorities to charge up to £2,500 per day for works on the busiest roads at peak times. This encourages quicker completion, off-peak working, or relocating works to reduce disruption on our roads. From January 2026, authorities will be able to use 50% of lane rental revenue for highway maintenance.

Highway authorities can issue overrun charges of up to £10,000 per day for works that exceed agreed timeframes. Currently these charges can only be applied on weekdays, however we are making changes to allow these charges to apply on weekends and bank holidays.

Finally, the Government has set out a new approach to infrastructure in the 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy, which was published in June 2025. This will restore confidence and drive economic growth by providing stability and certainty, and improve how infrastructure projects, like transport, are planned and delivered. We are working closely with HMT to ensure lessons learned from transport projects, such as set out in the James Stewart Review (published in June 2025) are incorporated into future priorities. The Department has accepted all recommendations from this Review and is already taking steps to implement them.

Responsibility for winter road maintenance, including grit boxes, is a devolved matter. As such this answer relates only to England.

Section 41 of the Highways Act 1980 places a duty on highway authorities to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that safe passage along a highway is not endangered by snow or ice.

It is for local highway authorities to determine what the most appropriate measures are to achieve this, based on local circumstances.

As transport is a devolved matter, it is the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Executive to mitigate for unsafe road conditions. Where appropriate, the Department for Transport will work with the Northern Ireland Executive on shared transport challenges.

On England’s Strategic Road Network, compensation claims of this sort are a matter for National Highways, and their website provides further details of how claims are dealt with. Between 1 January and 31 December 2024, National Highways received 1552 claims for vehicle damage due to potholes, of which 717 (or 46%) have been successful.

On local roads, compensation claims of this sort are a matter for the relevant local highway authority and the Department does not collect data on it.

The Secretary of State met her counterpart in the Northern Ireland Department for Infrastructure in her first days of office and the departments regularly discuss matters of mutual interest.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. He raises a very good point, because this was clearly done against the wishes of almost half a million people—a record number of people—who signed a petition on this matter. The most recent announcement by the Welsh Government, which raises the possibility of their doing a screeching U-turn on the policy, suggests to me that they might be more interested in deflecting national press attention from the scandal involving the Welsh Labour Government in Cardiff Bay.

In October, the Prime Minister announced an additional £8.3 billion of roads resurfacing funding over the period 2023/24 to 2033/34, with £150 million being made available in both this financial year and the next. This funding, made possible by reallocating funds from the HS2 programme, is enough to enable local highways authorities across England to resurface at least 5,000 miles of road.

As roads policy in the UK is devolved, provision of additional highways maintenance funding in Northern Ireland is a decision for the Northern Ireland Executive.

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. The wait times for theory driving tests are within target. He is absolutely right to draw the House’s attention to the fact that there is currently a longer waiting time for practical driving tests. That is why both I and the roads Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden), have tasked the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, which has a plan to get back within target in the next few months, exactly to help those constituents of the hon. Gentleman who are keen to get their practical test and get on the road, so that they can take advantage of the freedom that being able to drive offers.

The Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla was a hugely important state occasion, which brought millions of people around the country together in celebration, and showcased the best of the United Kingdom to the world. The Government is delighted to have supported the Coronation to ensure that the events were safe and well-planned.

Robust measures were put in place to ensure the ceremonial route was safe and not overcrowded during the Coronation. These measures included detailed planning alongside a range of partners and crowd management experts, incorporating best practice and lessons from previous events. All space was managed to ensure that there were no concerns relating to crowd safety.

The public viewing areas to watch the Coronation procession were open to the general public from 6am on Saturday 6th May. The government guidance published ahead of the Coronation made clear that capacity at the viewing areas was limited and that they would be closed when they were full. Due to the large numbers of members of the public viewing the event, it was indeed necessary to close the viewing areas once they reached capacity.