The figures revealed in a Freedom of Information request show approximately £270,000 was spent on implementing road closures, including placing out approximately 20,000 signs, and a further £300,000 on staffing and administration.
Traffic & Highways provided implementation figures for five years starting in 2021 at £210,000. These generally increased year-on-year up to a high of £280,000 in 2024 before falling by £10,000 last year.
It used an exception not to divulge staffing and administration costs for previous years stating that ‘information would require unreasonable diversion of resources because of the amount of information to be processed or the need to retrieve information from files not in current use’.
The FOI also requested the cost of coordination of utility works. Traffic said this was included in the £300,000 figure.
‘In many cases, Traffic & Highway Services coordinates multiple parties to undertake works within the same closure or traffic management measure to reduce disruption,’ they wrote.
‘For example, in 2025, approximately 4,000 applications and enquiries for temporary traffic management were made, but this was reduced through coordination to 2,798 permits for temporary traffic management being issued.
‘Of the total 2,798 permits, 1,252 permits related to works requiring a road closure.’
It said that during the five-year period, just one claim of damage to a vehicle caused by a temporary traffic sign, of about £2,000, was upheld.
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