Greenwich Labour councillors used their voting majority at the Town Hall on Wednesday (28 January) to avoid a debate on a 'damning' Government report finding the borough is one of the 13th worst local authorities in England for repairing potholes and maintaining local roads.
Local Conservative councillors put forward a motion at the Town Hall criticising Labour-run Greenwich Council's 'disappointing and unconstructive' response to the report, which was published this month by their own Labour Government. The Department for Transport's 'Local maintenance ratings 2025 to 2026' scorecards found that:
- The Royal Borough of Greenwich is one of only 13 local highway authorities in England to be given an overall ‘Red’ rating for road maintenance
- Greenwich was rated ‘Red’ on the ‘Spend scorecard’ (measuring “how much each local authority is spending on maintaining its local roads”)
- Greenwich was rated ‘Red’ on the ‘Wider Best Practice’ scorecard (measuring “how effectively each local highway authority follows best practice in highways maintenance”)
- Greenwich was rated ‘Amber’ for overall road condition
Following the publication of the report, Labour councillors chose to quibble with the data and methodology used, rather than the respond constructively to the Department for Transport's findings - which prompted Conservative councillors Matt Hartley and Charlie Davis to submit a motion calling on Greenwich Council to:
- Issue a public apology to residents of the Royal Borough of Greenwich for its failure to adequately maintain the borough’s road network
- Commit to fully co-operate with the Department for Transport’s planned ‘peer review’ intervention for Greenwich “where sector exports will work with [red-rated] authorities to improve processes and provide practical advice”
- Pro-actively seek advice from both Bexley Council and Lewisham Council (as neighbouring councils with similar road networks to Greenwich), which both managed to score more favourable ratings than Greenwich on the ‘Wider Best Practice Scorecard’, to inform changes to its own processes and practices
- Publish, before the end of March 2026, an Emergency Action Plan which should share the results of the above engagement, along with clear and measurable steps that the council intends to take to address the concerns raised by the Department for Transport
At last night's January Council meeting, Labour councillors used their voting majority in the Council Chamber to vote through a procedural device to cut the meeting short, rather than debate these proposals.
Councillor Matt Hartley, Leader of Greenwich Conservatives, said: "It says a lot that Greenwich Labour councillors were too embarrassed to debate their own record on potholes in our borough last night - though we shouldn't be suprised given their absymal failure to maintain our roads, as confirmed by the findings of their own Labour Government based on the data supplied by Greenwich Council itself.
"With the local elections less than a 100 days away, it is clear that Greenwich Council's Labour administration is busy trying to privately convince the Department for Transport to upgrade their ratings, and they're also claiming that their recent pre-election bribe of £8 million for fixing potholes should be taken into account. But this one-off funding is too little, too late and won't make up for years of a policy that they themselves even called 'managed decline' of the road network that residents rely on every day.
"Greenwich residents deserve an apology for Labour's failure to maintain our roads, and they also deserve a Council that responds with some humility to yet more evidence that it has been Getting Things Wrong on so many of the areas it is supposed to take responsibility for."
