Derbyshire drivers face the worst road conditions in the country, latest research reveals

Their recent study looked into the number of A-roads and motorways across the country which are in poor condition, and likely to need maintenance within the next year.

The experts at Bill Plant Driving School have explored the state of England’s roads, taking several factors into account - from highway and transport expenditure to the number of roads requiring maintenance.

The research has revealed that Derbyshire ranks as the local authority with the worst road conditions in the country – although the county council says the figures are ‘misleading’.

The county has the largest percentage of A-roads and motorways in poor condition and requiring maintenance, with 20% of Derbyshire roads in this state. Meanwhile, Derby has the tenth worst road conditions, with 6% requiring maintenance.

As Derbyshire leads the rankings, the county left Southend-on-Sea, the runner-up, far behind with only 11% of A-roads & motorways with a 'red' score.

While 73% of roads across each of England’s local authorities received the best ‘green’ score on average, Derbyshire ranked much lower with only 27% of roads falling into that classification.

A spokesperson for Derbyshire County Council said: “This data focusses on motorways and A roads. The county council is not responsible for any motorways or the major A roads in the county, the A50 and the A38, which are maintained by the government’s National Highways agency.

“In addition, we don’t collect road condition data in the same way as some other councils which means Derbyshire’s data isn’t comparable to other authorities. These comparisons using mismatched data can be misleading.

“The Department for Transport’s website states that they’re not currently comparable and it is developing an updated national data standard for future road condition monitoring to address this which will hopefully be implemented in 2024.

“We’re about to go into the third year of a comprehensive £120million highways improvement programme and in the last year alone we filled more than 100,000 potholes. In 2023/24 we’re planning to improve the condition of our roads through resurfacing, surface dressing or micro-asphalting a total of 405 roads at a cost of just under £14million."