Norfolk County Council has topped the National Highways and Transport (NHT) survey for the second year in a row.
Over the summer 3,300 people in Norfolk were asked for their views on topics such as road safety, highway maintenance, congestion and public transport as part of the survey.
The results are ranked against other participating councils from across the country to give a nationwide picture of how Norfolk is performing.
Out of the 29 county councils and larger unitary authorities in the peer group, Norfolk secured the top spot for overall satisfaction and saw the highest above average scores in both satisfaction with ‘traffic levels and congestion’ and ‘condition of highways’.
Cllr Martin Wilby, cabinet member for highways, infrastructure and transport, said: “To achieve first place amongst our peers once again is wonderful. This achievement is testament to the hard work and dedication of all the highway and transport team, particularly as the professionalism of staff responding to enquiries was one of the areas we were ranked first in.
“Despite the challenging situation brought by the pandemic we have continued to focus our efforts and spending on the things that people tell us are most important to them, which are safe roads that are in a good condition. So, I’m pleased that successful bids for government funding has seen us secure £25.5m for this year, boosting our highways maintenance budget to £38.6 million for 2020-21. One of the biggest schemes made possible by that extra money was the resurfacing of a section of the busy A1066 near Thetford, which was completed just last week.”
For the first time this year there were new questions in the survey seeking opinions on changing travel habits and congestion charging. Responses showed that people ‘strongly disagreed’ with the statement that they could travel less by car than they currently do and ‘strongly disagreed’ that they could walk, cycle or use public transport more than they currently do.
It is hoped the investment being made in installing more LED streetlights on Norfolk’s main roads will not only help reduce electricity consumption and contribute towards Norfolk’s journey to net zero, but also help improve customer satisfaction with streetlighting in future NHT surveys.
More than 100 councils took part in the survey which was sent out to 404,094 households across the country. Over 90,000 responded.
Portsmouth secured top spot for highways maintenance specifically, with 19 top performer places. Southwark came second with 10.