To ask the Minister for Infrastructure to detail any work her Department is currently undertaking to ensure the road network is adapted to the impacts of climate change, including heavier rainfall, freeze-thaw cycles and flooding.

The current impacts from winter weather, especially the very high levels of rainfall over the past few months, have exposed the weakness in our road network, resulting from many years of underinvestment.

I can confirm that I have established a £7.85m Winter Recovery Road Fund to allow an urgent and direct focus on repairing the surface defects which are causing the most concern.

I also recently launched ‘Better Roads’ - the draft Roads Maintenance Strategy, which outlines my Department’s intention to repair defects like potholes and protect the structural integrity of our roads by doing things in a new and different way.

This new Roads Maintenance Strategy will use cutting edge AI technology to gather a full and evidence-based survey of our road network, thereby identifying the stretches of road in the worst condition. This information will allow the improved targeting of resources to increase the effectiveness of road repairs, allowing localised areas of road to be resurfaced as a more cost-effective alternative to repeated patching.