The council is demanding that the Department for Transport revise their ‘red’ scoring, a move that would require ministerial approval, reports Marco Marcelline
Waltham Forest Council and the Department for Transport (DfT) have been embroiled in a war of words over the state of the borough’s roads, after a DfT report last month ranked Waltham Forest’s highways as among the worst in the country.
The borough received a ‘red’ rating by the DfT for how it utilised government funding it received to fix potholes and maintain roads last year.
The Echo understands the council is demanding that the DfT revise their scoring, a move that would require ministerial approval.
Council deputy leader Clyde Loakes MBE has said the town hall was “incredibly disappointed” by the DfT’s rankings, and urged it to “revisit the data and analyse it correctly so that they can accurately represent the situation on the ground”.
But the DfT slapped down the council’s complaints, stating the council’s allegation of mishandled or ignored data was “categorically untrue”.
A DfT spokesperson said: “The ratings follow a clear, published methodology using data from official statistics that local authorities provided themselves.”
The ratings grade 154 local authorities as red, amber or green based on current road condition and how effectively they are spending the government’s total £7.3 billion funding to fix potholes and invest in long term measures to maintain roads.
The red, amber, green ratings are based on three key areas: the condition of local roads, how much local authorities are spending on road repairs, and whether they are following best practice in maintaining highways.
4,385 potholes were repaired by the council last year (2024/25), compared to 5,756 the year before (2023/24).
A letter sent by the council’s chief executive Linzi Roberts-Egan to Waltham Forest Tory leader Emma Best has laid bare the extent of Waltham Forest’s disagreements with the DfT.
In it, Roberts-Egan declares several DfT findings to be inaccurate and a misrepresentation of the facts on the ground. One of the areas she challenges the government is on its claim that the borough was set to do zero kilometres of preventative work this year.
She writes: “The DfT gave surface dressing as an example of preventative treatment. This treatment is not suitable for an urban environment like Waltham Forest and is used more effectively on rural roads.
“This technique was tried in the past and led to numerous complaints at the time as the tar coated chippings were spread over a wide area on the carriageway and footway and relied on vehicles driving over it many times to bed it in.
“Instead, we undertake the traditional method of removing the top layer of the road surface and relaying it for preventative surfacing treatment. Therefore, in response to this question, we said we had no plans to undertake surface treatment in Waltham Forest and this was represented as no preventative work in Waltham Forest.”
A further bone of contention was the DfT scoring the borough 45.7 out of 100 for its highway maintenance spend compared to its highway maintenance block allocation – with the score being among the lowest in the country.
Roberts-Egan instead wrote that the borough spends “60% of its maintenance budget on treatment” and pointed to repairs commencing in January on the Cavendish Path bridge over the River Ching.
Speaking to the Echo, Cllr Best said: “It really is saying something that a Labour government is severely criticising its own Labour council for the state of our roads. It is a disgrace that the condition of some of our roads were rated as the worst in the country.
“It is also shocking to discover that the council has not used a proper [government mandated] SCANNER survey to assess the conditions of our roads since 2020. The council has been marking their own homework by doing it themselves.”
The Echo understands that the council had planned a further full road network survey in 2025 but decided to hold off to allow the DfT to publish its updated best practice guidance for condition surveys. This guidance was published in September, which was after the DfT requested road condition data for its rankings.
Speaking to the Echo last week, Cllr Loakes added: “Like other councils, including Greenwich and Kensington & Chelsea, we have serious concerns about how the DfT has reached its conclusions. Disappointingly, we have not yet heard back from anyone at the department following the constructive discussion we arranged on Monday, 12th January.
“We remain hopeful they will assess the Highway Inspection Data we provided and update our rating so that it accurately reflects the situation on the ground in Waltham Forest.”
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