Do we need to close roads to get more bang for our buck?

Central Bedfordshire took the controversial step this week of deciding to seek to close roads in a bid to reduce unnecessary expenditure. I'd argue that it's a sensible move, and one endorsed by the Audit Commission as better than simply 'salami-slicing' - trying to provide the same service with much less money.

Central Bedfordshire will seek to close a number of "unnecessary" country lanes in rural areas where there is a parallel route. Where it cannot physically stop them up because households need to access their properties, it will leave them to revert to bridleways. They will no longer be maintained by the highways department and will effectively be left to revert to tracks.

Still more roads will be downgraded in status to a new road hierarchy category. These roads will not be resurfaced or have any reactive maintenance either, except in the cases where these are considered dangerous and warrant emergency repairs.

Such a move will not be popular with the residents using the roads. They will expect the service that they have always had. But it's the right one. Highway authorities can't simply carrying on trying to do what they have always done and never questioning it. They need to stop themselves getting into a vicious circle where declining capital budgets mean less and less resurfacing takes place, which in turn creates bigger and bigger demands on revenue budgets for reactive maintenance.

The only way out of this vicious circle is to re-think the current service standards, in order to free up funding for planned maintenance. Northamptonshire took this bold step last year, questioning the national standard demanding that potholes are fixed within 24 hours, which leads to money wasted on expensive temporary repairs, and proposing a five-day target instead.

The Audit Commission says that everything must be considered in this re-think, up to and including closing roads or no longer maintaining them as public highways.

It will take bold local politicians to articulate the need for such a strategy. But without it, the available money will continue to be spread ever more thinly, and councils will be fire-fighting an ever-growing number of potholes. Hopefully the potholes report ordered by minister for local roads Norman Baker will recognise this and make recommendations accordingly.

Baker may well attract the ire of the red-tops, raging that motorists won't see 'their' potholes done right now, and fuming that their roads are being abandoned. But he'll have to face such criticism down.