Birmingham roads on a Highway to Hell as repairs collapse to less than 1 mile a year.
Latest data reveals it would take Labour-Council over 1700 years to resurface the City.
Newly released figures by Birmingham City Council have revealed the shocking collapse in the amount of roads being resurfaced across Birmingham since the Labour administration took office in 2012. In the last full year, 2024 to 2025, Birmingham City Council only resurfaced 1,400 metres of road space in the whole city. For context, Birmingham has approximately 2,500,000 metres of roads (approx. 1,550 miles). This means in the last full year, the effectively bankrupt Council only resurfaced 0.056% of the roads across the city.
At this rate, it would take the Labour-run Council over 1,785 years to resurface the whole city!
Leader of the Opposition & Birmingham Local Conservatives, Cllr Robert Alden (Con, Erdington) said:
Just 1,400m resurfaced last year by the Council, for context, that is less than 1 mile of road in a whole year! It is a failure. The Labour Council's slashing of highways repairs over the last decade is now hitting cyclists and motorists alike. All across the City roads are pothole-ridden, gravel has sprayed out of holes along roads and with every cold snap, freeze-thaw is breaking open more and more of the roads. This is why one of the points in the Local Conservative six-point plan published in January was about how we would fix the potholes in the city.
Robert added:
It's a kick in the teeth for residents that this latest data reveals it will take well over 1,700 years to resurface all the roads in the City under this Labour Council. The city simply cannot wait for the Labour Council to wake up to the state of the roads under their administration.
The data also shows that since 2010, up to last April, 486,570 metres of roads have been resurfaced in Birmingham. 144,318 (30% of all road length resurfaced since 2010 in Birmingham) took place under the previous Conservative-led Council between 2010 and 2012. More in two years than the current Labour Council has achieved in the last 10 years (118,648 metres)
Shadow Cabinet Member for Highways, Cllr Tim Huxtable (Con, Hall Green South) commented:
When I was previously running the roads in Birmingham, I cut through the red tape and got on with getting roads repaired and up to standard. Sadly, over the last 14 years, the Labour Council have over seen a collapse in roads being proactively resurfaced. This has led to the plague of potholes and surface damage now blighting the roads. It's clear the only way to get Birmingham's roads repaired is by backing our plan to balance the books and clean up the city.
Cllr Clifton Welch (Con, Kingstanding) said:
I have been pushing for a number of roads in Kingstanding to be resurfaced. Yet the Council not only aren't resurfacing roads, but they are barely even fixing potholes. This is why I asked the question to get to the bottom of just how little resurfacing work now happens. It's clear that only the Local Conservatives can make Birmingham's roads safe again.
