Wirral fares well as national road condition ratings published
Wirral Council is one of only 21 out of 154 local highway authorities in England and Wales to receive the highest rating for meeting best practice standards in highways maintenance.
Wirral also rated GREEN on the ‘spend’ scorecard, which reflects how well Wirral invests in its highway maintenance programme, as the Department for Transport published its Local Highway Maintenance Ratings for 2025-26 this week.
Overall, Wirral was rated as AMBER which was also the rating given to the overall condition of Wirral roads.
The Department for Transport introduced the ‘red, amber, green’ (RAG) rating system to measure how well each local highway authority is maintaining its local roads and making use of its government funding. Publishing the findings as they have allows local people to see how well their council is maintaining roads in their area.
Wirral was one of the few councils to achieve a green rating on the Best Practice scorecard, which evaluates how effectively authorities adopt modern methods for road maintenance—such as using technology to repair and prevent potholes more efficiently.
The ratings are based on official statistics and transparency reports published by councils. Authorities with well-maintained roads, strong adoption of best practice, and significant investment in maintenance receive a green rating. Those with mixed or weaker performance are rated amber or red.
This system not only helps residents see how their council is performing it also encourages councils to improve by following best practice. It also enables the government to identify where support is needed to improve road conditions nationwide.
To access the full £7.3 billion highways maintenance funding for 2026/27 to 2029/30, councils must continue publishing reports on their maintenance work, ensuring ratings remain up to date and compliance with best practice is monitored.
