UK roads, the arteries of commerce and daily life, are under growing strain. Local roads (managed by councils) form about 98% of the network, carrying most daily journeys, but many are ageing.
Recent data show roughly 4% of local ‘A’ roads and 7% of ‘B/C’ roads were classified as needing maintenance in 2024. Unclassified lanes (60% of the network) fare worse – about 17% were in poor condition.
By contrast, the Strategic Road Network (motorways and major A‑roads, just ~2% of length) is better maintained: ~4% of motorways and 7% of trunk roads needed work in 2024, reflecting heavy investment by National Highways.
Still, even these figures understate real-life impact: According to the RAC, UK drivers are now 1.7× more likely to suffer a pothole-related breakdown than in 2006, and commuters widely report “pothole plague” and damaged vehicles. Climate (freeze–thaw cycles, flooding) and rising traffic are key culprits, as RAC analysis notes, “the UK’s wet and cold climate” and heavy loadings make roads prone to cracking, with water freezing in small cracks to form potholes. A 2023 Parliament report warned that without better upkeep, backlog repairs (estimated £15+ billion on local roads) will grow worse.
Despite large annual budgets, maintenance has shifted toward reactive fixes. For example, government funding is disbursed by formula (road length/bridges) with many pots focusing on pothole repairs. Officials found this…
“…likely push[es] local authorities to focus spending on short-term reactive work, rather than more cost-effective preventive maintenance”
Public frustration is high: surveys find people increasingly unhappy with road surfaces and vehicle damage. In response, ministers have pledged billions: the “Plan for Change” (2024–26) injected ~£1.6 billion for resurfacing (enough to fix ~7 million potholes in 2025/26), plus additional funds to councils. But tackling the problem long-term requires smarter data and technology, not just bigger budgets.
Measuring Road Condition: Data and Standards
Effective maintenance begins with accurate condition data. In England, local authorities collect road-condition surveys (e.g. using vehicle-mounted SCANNER units) and report “red/amber/green” metrics to the DfT. National Highways does similar surveys (TRACS) on motorways. These official stats (published Dec 2024) confirm small but steady declines:
- Since 2020 the % of local “green” A-roads fell from 73% to 68%, with “amber” and “red” up.
- For minor roads, only ~63% were green in 2024. However, data gaps and inconsistencies have long been problematic. For example, SCANNER use by councils has plummeted (from ~99% of A roads in 2018 to 81% in 2024), and many unclassified roads lack robust survey coverage.
- A government review noted that DfT’s own stats show road conditions “broadly stable,” yet this clashes with ground reality and user complaints. To reconcile this, new data standards and tech are being adopted.
PAS 2161
The landmark step is PAS 2161:2024, the Publicly Available Specification (by BSI/DFT) for road condition monitoring data. PAS 2161 sets out how road-condition data should be captured, validated, categorised and shared for national reporting.
Crucially, it is technology neutral: unlike the old SCANNER mandate, any compliant method (from laser scanners to AI cameras) can be used. The standard defines clear condition categories and network coverage, rigorous quality checks, standard data formats, and requires vendors to demonstrate their technology meets performance benchmarks.
A recent industry analysis heralded PAS 2161 as “a roadmap to smarter, more sustainable road management,” enabling local authorities to choose innovative solutions while ensuring consistency. Government trials (England-wide in 2025) will test different systems under this framework. By 2026 PAS 2161 aims to become a formal British Standard.
PAS 2161 builds on a broader policy shift. In 2021–24, the DfT explicitly moved away from prescribing SCANNER in favour of a data-standard approach. Analysis found that adopting a data standard could unlock £300 million of efficiency savings per year by enabling risk-based maintenance planning and reducing duplicate surveys. This new routine will let councils “collect road condition data using any technology of their choice provided the supplier conforms to the data standard”.
In practice this means local authorities can deploy AI cameras, smartphone sensor networks, or other modern tools – as long as the resulting data fits PAS 2161’s categories and format. The PAS explicitly “touches on the use of technologies in delivering RCM data” to ensure suitability.
As a result, here at Route Reports, we are embedding this compliance into workflows.
Key PAS 2161 Features:
- Unified Condition Categories: Clear criteria (red/amber/green) for road condition, improving comparability across regions.
- Technology-Neutral Framework: Any compliant survey system can be used, fostering innovation instead of a single mandated machine.
- Data Validation & QA: Rigorous checks and processing rules to ensure accuracy before national reporting.
- Coverage & Frequency: Specifies what percentage of each road class must be surveyed and how often, to keep data timely.
- Standard Formats: CSV/Shapefile exports and interfaces for seamless data sharing between authorities and national systems.
- Demonstration Requirement: Compliant technology must meet performance benchmarks, earning a “demonstrated” status if successful.
Evolving to Proactive Maintenance
Traditional road management has been largely reactive: crews patch potholes only after they appear. But experts urge a shift to preventive, risk-based strategies. A 2023 public spending review criticized the DfT for not tying funding to actual road condition, noting too much funding is “focused on pothole repairs rather than preventative maintenance”.
The DfT has since updated guidance for risk-based asset management, but many local authorities still lack the data and tools for true predictive upkeep. Modern monitoring tech, like Route Reports, can change this: by detecting early surface defects and trends, councils can schedule treatments (like sealing or overlay) before roads fail.
The BSI says “robust data collection is the foundation of effective monitoring and maintaining our road network”.
Real-time, precise condition data helps allocate scarce resources, extends pavement life, and proactively prevents hazards. Meanwhile, perception of road quality also matters. Surveys show commuters often judge roads by the worst potholes they see. In 2024, only 1 in 4 people in some councils were satisfied with road condition. Improving data (and response speed) can, and will, boost public confidence here. For example, by tying into resident-reporting systems, a dashcam-based inspection tool can help engineers resolve inquiries quickly. Indeed, councils using new tech report handling citizen queries faster by showing them actual road images from their database.
AI and Advanced Monitoring Technologies
AI, machine learning, and modern sensors are rapidly changing how roads are monitored. New tools are being used with AI to detect defects faster and more efficiently.
These tools support a more proactive approach: using broad, low-cost data to highlight high-risk areas, then targeting those with specialist inspections. This hybrid model can dramatically cut costs, potentially saving hundreds of millions by focusing repairs where they’re needed most.
In the UK, innovation is gathering pace. Councils are trialling AI-powered cameras and robotic repair systems. Among these innovators, Route Reports is leading the way. Using AI and compact sensors mounted on everyday fleet vehicles, like bin lorries and inspection cars, to scan roads at normal speeds. It automatically identifies issues such as potholes, cracks, faded lines, and damaged signs, uploading geo-tagged data to the cloud in seconds. This gives highway managers real-time visibility and a smarter way to manage road assets.
AI-Driven Monitoring Benefits:
- Ultra-fast defect detection: Route Reports delivers 4× faster highway defect detection than manual inspection, enabling truly proactive scheduling.
- High precision multi-lane scanning: The system detects issues across all lanes and uses RTK-GPS for centimetre accuracy, ensuring even edge cracks are located correctly.
- Multi-asset coverage: Cameras identify road surface defects and assets like signs or barriers, creating a comprehensive inventory of pavement, markings and furniture.
- Real-time data integration: Defect data flow instantly into asset-management systems (Brightly’s Confirm, Symology etc.) so job orders or repairs can be triggered automatically.
- Safer inspections: Because sensors operate from within moving vehicles, inspectors no longer need to step onto live carriageways. Assessments “can be made at speed” without staff exposure to traffic.
- Virtual re-inspections: Planners and engineers can “drive” any route in the system’s app, viewing historical and current imagery (Route View). One highway engineer reports, Route View is “especially helpful for resolving resident enquiries, monitoring unauthorised work and viewing historical asset conditions”.
The Role of Route Reports
As these trends merge, Route Reports is delighted to be a leader in delivering this necessary change. Route Reports’ AI-powered road condition platform embodies the PAS-aligned approach: collecting detailed condition data from vehicles, processing it with machine learning, and presenting actionable intelligence to highway managers.
In practice, significant gains are already being realised:
“It’s the speed that the images come back to us, it’s 30 seconds. Inspectors can call me from the road and say ‘have a look at this,’ and I’m already going through the images.” Another local cabinet member notes that using this tech “means we can proactively log and fix potholes, helping ensure we have well-maintained roads across the country”.
Route Reports also places huge importance on integration and usability. The solution can plug into existing asset-management tools to trigger repairs without extra work. It automatically updates sign and marking inventories, matching these with on-the-ground imagery. All of this speeds up reaction time and helps justify maintenance decisions with hard data.
In Summary
The UK’s road network faces clear challenges – aging infrastructure, budget pressures, and harsher weather. The solution lies in better data and smarter tools, not just spending more on pothole crews. By leveraging AI, continuous monitoring and the new PAS 2161 standard, organizations like Route Reports are leading a shift to predictive, efficient maintenance.
By combining advanced, dedicated, in vehicle mounted sensors, machine learning and seamless workflows highways can be kept safer and smoother while overall costs are reduced. As one industry analysis concludes, innovation in road monitoring
“is essential for sustainable and inclusive growth”
A goal that Route Reports’ technologies are helping to achieve.
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Sources & Further Reading:
BSI
Department for Transport
- Road condition data and technology review: position paper, May 2025
- Road conditions in England to March 2024
Highways Today
RAC
UK Government
