Five councillors will meet in public on 6 October to review West Berkshire's road programme. Residents can send questions, but only until Saturday 26 September.

West Berkshire Council has created a group of five councillors to look at how it decides which roads get fixed, and residents can put questions to it in public.

The Highways Improvements Group meets for the first time on Tuesday 6 October at 6.30pm in the Council Chamber at Market Street, Newbury. Anyone may attend.

Questions have to arrive at least 10 days before a meeting. Counting back from 6 October, that makes the deadline Saturday 26 September, two days from now. Questions go to executivecycle@westberks.gov.uk, and the council says a written answer follows within five working days of the meeting. (West Berkshire Council, 21 September 2026)

What the group will actually look at

The council has published the remit. The group will consider:

  • responses to petitions about highways
  • the annual Highway Improvement Programme, the resurfacing list
  • the annual Network Management Programme
  • the annual Winter Service Plan, which is the gritting routes
  • ad-hoc network management requests
  • the Peer Review Action Plan
  • how the council’s highways term contractor is performing

Those are not small documents. The Highway Improvement Programme is the list that decides which roads are resurfaced: this year it runs to 41 schemes, 45.6km of carriageway and 256,268 square metres, and exactly one of those schemes is in Newbury parish, 150 metres of retexturing on Monks Lane. We went through that list in full when it was published: Newbury gets 150 metres of a 45.6km resurfacing programme.

The Winter Service Plan is the other one worth asking about before the clocks change, since it fixes which roads get gritted and which do not.

Five councillors, no power to decide anything

The group has five elected members representing all political parties, with named substitutes, supported by highways officers who provide technical and procedural advice.

It is an advisory body. In the council’s own words it “will not have formal decision-making powers”, and its recommendations “will help inform decisions taken by the Executive Member for Highways and Environment”. That post is held by Councillor Stuart Gourley, who also approved the reversal of Newbury’s extended pedestrian zone hours in August.

Gourley said the group was “an important step in making sure local knowledge and community concerns play a stronger role in shaping our highways priorities”, and that it would “help ensure greater transparency around how highways improvements are prioritised, while providing a clear route for residents and communities to raise concerns and questions”.

The group does not appear on the council’s list of committees, because it is not one. That matters for what you can expect: no vote, no minutes of a decision, and no call-in period. What you get is an answer in writing.

The numbers behind it

Three figures from the council’s own highways transparency report explain why this is worth a question.

Spending is falling, and not because the Government cut it. West Berkshire spent £20,000,670 on highways maintenance in 2025/26 and projects £16,126,600 for 2026/27, a drop of £3.87 million. Funding from the Department for Transport and central government actually rose over the same period, from £9,818,000 to £10,226,156. What fell was the council’s own contribution.

Bar chart of West Berkshire Council's total highways maintenance spend: 13.86 million pounds in 2024/25, 20.00 million in 2025/26, and a projected 16.13 million in 2026/27, which is shown in red.
Chart by The Newbury Times
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A roads are getting worse. The share of the district’s A roads in the red category, meaning poor condition and to be considered for maintenance, has risen three years running: 2.7% in 2023, 3.6% in 2024, 3.8% in 2025.

The programme covers a small slice of the network. The council maintains 1,303km of carriageway. This year’s 45.6km of improvement work is 3.5% of it. The council estimates it filled 3,095 potholes in 2025/26. (West Berkshire Council, Highways Maintenance Transparency Report 2026)

There is a live test of this sitting on the B4009

The council closed Streatley Hill at 9:30am on 15 September for emergency highway repair work, promoted by the council itself rather than a utility. Its entry in the Department for Transport street works register gave a planned end of 16:30 on Wednesday 23 September.

That time has now passed. The record has not been closed, no actual end has been logged, there is no second permit extending it, and the council has not updated the entry since 13:16 on 15 September, the first afternoon of the closure. (Department for Transport street works record JV0058853-01, via StreetGuide)

Streatley is about 11 miles north-east of Newbury, across the river from Goring, so this is not a Newbury road. It is a fair example of the thing the new group says it wants to improve: how the council tells people what is happening on its own network. Our Newbury roadworks and travel page carries the current position.

What it means for you

  • If you want something raised at the first meeting, email executivecycle@westberks.gov.uk by Saturday 26 September. After that the next chance is the December meeting, since the group sits every two months.
  • Be specific. The group’s remit is programmes and performance, not individual potholes. A question about why a named road is not on the Highway Improvement Programme, or about the gritting route past a particular school, fits. “Fix my street” does not.
  • Individual defects still go through the normal route, which is westberks.gov.uk/reportaproblem. Reporting a pothole there is what gets it inspected.
  • You can just turn up on 6 October. The Council Chamber at Market Street is open to the public for this, and meetings run every two months after that.
  • Nothing the group says binds the council. If you want a decision changed, the decision still belongs to the Executive Member for Highways and Environment.

Sources