31 days until reports are due — 10 September 2026
The DfT transparency report,
done properly.
Every English local highway authority must publish one and send DfT the link — roughly 320 answers across 13 tables, with word limits and figures that have to agree with each other. This fills in what is already published, reads your own documents for the rest, and checks the whole thing before you put your name on it.
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Not publishing is not a quiet option
The transparency report is not paperwork filed and forgotten. 3 of its sections are the evidence DfT reads for incentive funding conditions, the figures in it feed the ratings DfT publishes for each authority, and the finished document sits in public next to every neighbouring council's.
Incentive funding rides on it
25% rides on spending the full allocation, 12% rides on an up-to-date asset management strategy and 12% rides on professional development. DfT's own template asks you to project 2026-27 assuming no capital incentive funding has been withheld — which is DfT saying, in its own words, that it can be. Leave those sections thin and the evidence for your funding condition is thin.
DfT rates you from what you publish
The red, amber and green ratings are drawn from published statistics, not from your narrative. A report whose numbers disagree with the published figures — or with each other — disagrees in public, and the correction is a harder conversation than getting it right first time.
The gap is visible
The report is published on your own website and the link goes to roadmaintenance@dft.gov.uk. An authority that has not published has not quietly missed a deadline — it has an empty space where every neighbouring authority has a document, and members, journalists and residents can all see it.
Pick your authority. Most of the numbers are already there.
Prepare
Pick your authority from the 154 English local highway authorities, matched to their ONS code. 31 figures — road lengths, condition percentages, your maintenance block allocation — arrive from the published GOV.UK tables, each carrying the table and cell it came from. Then attach the documents your answers will cite.
AI Prefill
One button. It searches your council's own website for what it has published, reads those documents against every unanswered question, and writes in the answers it can quote — each with the passage it came from and marked unconfirmed until you say otherwise.
Fill in the rest
One section at a time, with DfT's own guidance beside each question. Word counts, running totals and cross-checks update as you type, so nothing is left to discover at the end.
Check
Everything outstanding, grouped by what you have to do about it: confirm, fill in, fix, or read. Each one links straight to the question it is about.
Publish
The core report and technical annex as Word documents in DfT's own styles, with the instruction notes removed — plus an evidence pack recording where every answer came from, for the assurance sampling that follows.
£0
Everything up to publication. Prepare the report, run AI Prefill, answer every question, run the checks, and download a full working copy to circulate, review and sign off inside your authority. No card, no trial period, and no feature held back.
You can therefore finish the whole return, and decide whether it is worth publishing through this application, before spending anything.
Every check, applied before you publish
Blocking checks
- A4.1 total spend equals B1.2.1, year by year
- A3.2 pothole count equals B3.2.1
- Every total row equals the rows above it
- A capital shortfall against your DfT allocation is explained in B1.2.2
- An asset policy last reviewed before August 2024 has a timetable in B5.1.5
- Drainage spend split totals 100%
- No answer exceeds its DfT word limit
Things worth checking
- Condition percentages that do not sum to about 100
- A permanent repair costing less than a temporary one
- B3.2.2 components that disagree with the total
- Evidence summaries left blank
- Incentive confirmations answered No
- B2.1 activity inconsistent with the pothole figures
Built for the way councils and consultancies actually work
One workspace, many authorities
A council runs a single report. A consultancy runs a portfolio. Same product, same permissions model, invite colleagues by email.
Evidence trail as you go
DfT samples evidence after publication. Every figure records where it came from and every change records who made it, so the request is a lookup rather than an investigation.
Start with your authority
Sign in with your work email address. Your report is created against the current DfT template and prefilled from published statistics before you type anything.
Start your reportCommon questions
Does this replace the DfT template?
No. It produces exactly that template. The exported Word documents reuse DfT's own heading styles, table layouts and page setup, with the instruction notes removed as the guidance asks. What changes is how you fill it in.
Where do the prefilled figures come from?
The published statistical tables on GOV.UK, read directly rather than retyped. Each value records its dataset code, DfT's publication date and the exact cell. You can override anything, and an override is recorded as your own figure rather than an official one.
What about our spend and pothole numbers?
Those are not published anywhere machine-readable, so they come from your finance and asset systems. What the application does is check them against each other and against your DfT allocation, which is where the compliance risk actually sits.
Can several people work on one report?
Yes. Invite colleagues to your organisation by email. Every change is saved as it is typed and attributed to whoever made it, and the sign-off block captures your head of service and section 151 officer.
Does anything leave our network?
Only requests to GOV.UK to refresh published statistics, and those go to a fixed list of addresses. There is no third-party analytics, no external fonts or scripts, and the application ships with a copy of the statistics so it works with no internet access at all.
What does it cost?
Preparing, checking and reviewing a report is free. Publishing one — on your website or to DfT — needs a Public Distribution Licence, bought by purchase order against a quotation you download from the application. No card is ever taken. The full terms are on the licensing page.