The Public Sees the Backlog — NHT Shows What Comes Next

The Role of Public Satisfaction in Highways Performance

Across the NHT Network, local authorities have long understood that public satisfaction is not simply a perception metric. It is a critical insight into how the highways network is performing in real terms.

Through the NHT Public Satisfaction Survey, authorities consistently capture how residents experience their local roads, from surface condition and potholes to the visibility of repairs, the management of roadworks and the clarity of communication. Over time, this data has shown a clear and consistent picture. Highway maintenance remains the lowest-performing service area, with satisfaction in road surface condition at just 26%, and long-term declines in how residents perceive the overall condition of the network.

For the sector, this is more than feedback. It is evidence.

It tells us where the network is falling short from the public’s perspective, and it increasingly informs how authorities prioritise investment, shape programmes and communicate with residents and elected members. In this way, NHT data is playing a central role in directing funding decisions and ensuring that limited resources are focused where they will have the greatest impact on both network performance and public confidence.

ALARM 2026: Understanding the Scale of the Challenge

The latest Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) ALARM 2026 survey reinforces and explains this picture. It sets out the scale of the underlying challenge, reporting a £18.62 billion backlog of carriageway repairs and estimating that it would take 12 years to bring local roads back to a reasonable steady state. Despite increases in maintenance funding, the condition of the network has improved only marginally, and the sector continues to operate within a significant funding shortfall.

Bridging the Gap Between Data and Public Experience

When viewed alongside NHT data, these findings are not surprising. They provide the engineering and financial context behind what residents are already telling us.

Where ALARM quantifies the backlog, NHT shows how that backlog is experienced. Residents see the effects in deteriorating road surfaces, repeated patching, and disruption from ongoing works. They notice when repairs do not last, and when improvements are not yet visible. As a result, satisfaction remains low even where investment has increased, reflecting both the scale of the challenge and the time required for sustained programmes to take effect.

The CQC Framework: Balancing Cost, Quality and Customer

This relationship between asset condition and public perception sits at the heart of the NHT CQC framework—Cost, Quality and Customer. The framework recognises that highways services must balance financial constraints, technical performance and customer experience, rather than optimising any one of these in isolation.

What This Means in Practice

In practical terms, this means that authorities are making decisions within a more integrated framework, where:

• cost reflects the reality of constrained and competing budgets
• quality ensures interventions are adding value at the right point in time
• customer insight ensures that outcomes are understood and valued by the public

A Sector Under Pressure: Reactive vs Preventative Maintenance

The ALARM 2026 findings highlight the consequences of a system that remains under pressure. The filling of 1.9 million potholes in a single year, alongside resurfacing cycles that in some cases extend towards once every 97 years, tells us that we are in a reactive situation. Regardless of the volume of proactive treatments as a percentage of spend all councils are effectively reactive. While these interventions are essential for safety and immediate risk management, they do not always deliver long-term improvement or sustained public confidence. Unfortunately unless funding increases substantially the reactive nature and continued decline is here to stay.

Using Data to Drive Better Maintenance Decisions

NHT data provides an important data set to combine with asset data. Enabling authorities to understand how different approaches to maintenance are perceived by residents. It supports more informed decisions about the balance between reactive and preventative work, and about how programmes can be designed to deliver outcomes that are both technically effective and publicly credible.

Carbon Considerations and the Path to Net Zero

Alongside this, the indepth work of carbon forecasting within the NHT CQC Network is further shaping how decisions are made. Authorities are increasingly considering not only the cost and condition implications of their programmes, but also their carbon impact and alignment with wider net zero commitments. This introduces an additional dimension to decision-making, requiring trade-offs to be assessed across cost, carbon, quality and customer outcomes.

Balancing Short-Term Fixes with Long-Term Sustainability

In this context, short-term reactive repairs may address immediate issues but can carry higher whole-life carbon costs and limited long-term benefit. Planned, preventative interventions can deliver more sustainable outcomes, but require clear communication to ensure that residents understand and value the investment being made.

Signs of Progress — But a Persistent Perception Gap

Encouragingly, the latest NHT results show early signs of improvement. Overall public satisfaction has increased to 48%, with modest gains in perceptions of road condition and maintenance activity. However, there remains a clear gap between increased investment and how that investment is experienced by residents.

This reinforces a critical point for the sector. Investment must not only be made. It must be experienced, by the public, as improvement.

A More Integrated Approach to Highways Decision-Making

For senior leaders, the implication is clear. Highways services now sit at the intersection of financial pressure, asset deterioration, climate commitments and public expectation. Navigating this complexity requires a more integrated and evidence-led approach.

NHT provides the public insight needed to understand what matters most to residents and how services are performing in their eyes. ALARM provides the engineering and funding evidence that explains the scale of the challenge. The CQC framework, alongside carbon considerations, enables these perspectives to be brought together into more balanced and effective decision-making.

Taken together, they form a powerful evidence base for shaping strategy, prioritising investment and rebuilding public confidence in the network.

The Future of Highways Strategy

The direction of travel is clear. The future of highways decision-making will not be defined by asset condition or funding alone, but by how well these are aligned with customer insight, carbon impact and long-term sustainability.

What Comes Next for Local Authorities

What comes next is a shift in how decisions are made.

Authorities will need to bring together asset data, funding, carbon and customer insight into a single, integrated evidence base, ensuring investment is not only technically sound, but experienced by residents as real improvement.

In this context, the role of the NHT Network becomes central. It provides the insight needed to ensure decisions are not only right in theory, but working in practice.