local authorities are struggling to attract contractors to bid for road projects as funds are diverted in favour of tactical roads, an industry expert has claimed.
James Haluch, managing director of highways for construction huge Amey, highlighted that for every £1 spent on local roads, £52 was spent on tactical roads. Haluch cautioned this “massive” disparity implied local authorities are “in a very literal sense, struggling.”
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• Motorways get 52 times much more funding per mile than local roads
“We’re seeing that local authorities are struggling to get contractors to bid,” said Haluch. “Some examples: a shire county, big maintenance contract, two bidders. There’s another example with just one bidder.”
Those difficulties come, Haluch said, even though tactical roads are “carrying one third of all vehicles, two thirds of HGVs”, and “100 per cent of all cars at some point.”
Part of the issue, Haluch said, was that some councils were expecting contractors to submit complex bids for small projects: “The cost of [a full tender process] would actually have been higher than the probable profits you would make on the job.”
That process contrasted sharply, Haluch said, with major projects from Highways England, which controls 4,300 miles of motorways and major A roads: “With Highways England [the tendering process] is quite quick, there’s a lot of repetition, contractors know the system pretty well.”