ASHINGTON TOWN COUNCIL SEEKS ANSWERS ON HIGHWAYS INVESTMENT ACROSS NORTHUMBERLAND
Ashington Town Council is stepping up its scrutiny of Northumberland County Council's highways investment programme, making the case that Ashington's roads deserve a fair share of planned spending — and asking searching questions to ensure the evidence supports that case.
The Council's engagement on highways began earlier this year when Councillor David Coyle brought a proposal to the Council’s Finance and General Services Committee, back in March, noting that the Government had announced record levels of funding for local road maintenance in England — £7.3 billion in capital funding between 2026 and 2030, with £1.6 billion to be released in 2026/27 alone. This is on top of a £500 million uplift already provided for 2025/26, an increase of nearly 50% on the previous year. The funding is specifically intended to move local authorities away from emergency patching and towards longer-term, planned improvement of roads, footways, bridges and street lighting. As the local highways authority, Northumberland County Council will receive an allocation of this funding and will decide how it is prioritised across the county. Council agreed that Ashington's longstanding road condition issues meant the town had a strong case for meaningful consideration in those decisions and authorised a letter to NCC making that case.
NCC responded positively, and at the Council's meeting in April, Councillor Mark Mather, NCC Cabinet Member for Roads and Highways, Paul Jones, Director of Environment and Transport, and Kris Westerby, Head of Highways, set out in detail how NCC manages and maintains Northumberland's 3,200 miles of roads, 1,600 miles of footways, 1,134 bridges, and 86,000 gullies — a network of significant scale and complexity. The presentation covered how NCC prioritises investment through its data-driven pavement management system, using road condition surveys, AI-powered video inspection, accident data, and input from town and parish councils to identify schemes through a scoring matrix.
The presentation also provided specific information about investment in Ashington. Over the past three years, NCC has spent a total of £559,846 on roads and cycleways capital schemes across Ashington's six wards in 2023/24, rising to £569,292 in 2024/25, with a further £5.6 million nearing completion in 2025/26 — the latter including £3.1 million of active travel schemes supporting cycling and walking infrastructure. Six schemes are proposed for 2026/27 with a budget estimate of £770,000, covering roads including the 7th, 8th and 9th Row, Wansbeck Road, Central Primary, Woodhorn Villas and Armstrong Way. Future years bring further commitments, with Station Road and North Seaton Road planned for 2027, Garden City Villas and Morpeth Road for 2028, and Briardene, Park Villas, First Avenue and Fifth Avenue for 2029.
On revenue, NCC has spent £465,379 on reactive make-safe repairs in Ashington in 2023/24, £780,211 in 2024/25 — an increase driven by additional countywide drainage funding following severe weather events — and £521,868 in 2025/26, a three-year total of over £1.76 million. Planned capital works outside the main LTP programme — covering drainage, signage, road markings and structural patching — have totalled a further £836,711 over the same period.
NCC also presented data on road condition, using the Department for Transport's PAS 2161 transparency reporting framework, under which Northumberland is currently rated amber overall. Road condition is assessed on a scale of 1 to 5, with green, amber and red ratings derived from condition scores across A, B, C and unclassified roads. Following the meeting, NCC provided the PAS 2161 ratings and a Vaisala condition map for Ashington's six wards — information the Council welcomed.
Of particular concern to Members is the condition of C and unclassified roads. NCC's own transparency report and Pavement Performance Dashboard show that 13% of C roads and 28% of unclassified roads across Northumberland are in poor condition — figures significantly higher than the 2% recorded for A roads. Hirst and Central wards in Ashington record red condition ratings across 31% and 36% of all roads respectively. Crucially, the transparency report also shows that the proportion of unclassified roads in the red category has been getting worse, not better, rising from 16% in 2020 to 18% in 2024, even as A road condition has improved. This matters acutely for Ashington, where a large proportion of the roads residents use every day are C and unclassified routes carrying heavy residential traffic. The Council notes that unclassified roads are assessed by manual Coarse Visual Inspection rather than the machine-based scanning used on A, B and C roads — raising questions about whether the true extent of deterioration on the unclassified network is being fully captured.
There is a great deal of information to work through, and the Council is clear that a proper understanding of the issues facing Ashington requires context. Seeing the equivalent road condition ratings for other parts of the county alongside those for Ashington will help Members make sense of where Ashington sits relative to the rest of Northumberland, and whether the investment planned under the Local Transport Plan Programme reflects the relative condition of roads in each area.
Councillor Coyle brought the matter back to the July Finance and General Services Committee, making the case for that wider context to be provided. Members supported the proposal and agreed to write to NCC Highways requesting:
- The Green, Amber and Red PAS 2161 condition ratings for North Northumberland, Tynedale, Castle Morpeth, and Cramlington, Bedlington and Seaton Valley — in the same format as provided for Ashington — to assist the Council in understanding the investment set out in the Local Transport Plan Programme 2026–2029;
- Confirmation of the date and survey period to which the current ratings apply, including whether this differs between A, B, C and unclassified roads;
- The confirmed 2026/27 works programme by named location for those schemes currently listed as countywide or "Various" — including surface dressing, micro-surfacing, high-risk and route action sites, and footway and public rights of way programmes — given that the final programme was agreed by NCC Cabinet in March 2026; and
- An update on the outcome of the North East Combined Authority report on the £9.4 million Reserve Schemes (Highway Maintenance Incentive Fund), and how those schemes will be allocated across the county.
- For the Green, Amber and Red ratings received for Ashington, and in turn those requested for other areas, the mileage for each.
Following a further proposal from Cllr Caroline Ball, members also agreed to place on a future agenda the establishment of a dedicated Highways Committee at the Town Council, to ensure that highways matters remain live, and under active Council scrutiny going forward; this is in addition to and to complement the oversight available to County Cllrs for Ashington.
Councillor Lynne Grimshaw, chairing the meeting, welcomed the Council's scrutiny of current investment plans but also raised a pointed question about the past — specifically, what had happened to a number of highways priorities that County Councillors had put forward and fought for over many years, and which now appeared to have fallen away without explanation. Members were supportive of pursuing this question but agreed that the priority at this stage was to get the broader questions about road condition and investment answered first. The status of those previously identified priorities would be picked up as a separate matter in due course.
