Sir Rod Stewart fills potholes next to his home
There are up to two million potholes on UK roads, according to the RAC, working out to over seven per mile.
In the infamously rainy British Isles, potholes are caused by water seeping into cracks in the surface and freezing. Infrastructure investment to prevent this simply hasn’t kept up.
Filling them all in one go would cost an estimated £14billion, and doing so at the current rate of repair would take 11 years.
Breakdowns caused by pothole damage to shock absorbers, suspension springs or wheels are up, as poll after poll shows drivers are furious.
This dire situation has now become an international embarrassment, as OECD figures show UK spending on local road repairs has been cut by more than nearly all other high-income countries in the group.
READ MORE: ‘I was nearly killed by a pothole and the roads are getting worse’
According to analysis by the Local Government Association (LGA), £4billion was spent on small road maintenance nationally back in 2006.
Fast-forward to 2019 – the latest year for which comparable data are available – and this had halved to £2billion.
In comparison, Sweden, Denmark, the US, Japan and New Zealand have all increased spending by half during this time, while countries like France and Canada have strived to keep their pothole repair budgets at a consistent level.
Only Italy and Ireland have witnessed drops similar to the UK in local road spending.
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Councillor Shaun Davies, Chair of the LGA, said: “The UK has fallen from the top to almost the bottom of the league when it comes to the amount we spend on repairing our local roads.
“Decades of reductions in funding from central Government to local road repair budgets has left councils facing the biggest ever annual pothole repair backlog.”
The LGA’s latest satisfaction polling found that just 34 percent of residents were satisfied with how well their local roads were maintained – the lowest level recorded since the survey began in 2012.
In the March Spring Budget, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced an additional £200million would be allocated to England’s Pothole Fund in 2023.
This the LGA welcomes, but warns councils still face “considerable challenges” amid rising material costs and extreme winter weather.
Mr Davies added: “In order to support motorists, the Government should take this opportunity to work with councils to develop a long-term, fully-funded programme to catch up with the backlog.
“Ultimately, all local transport decisions should be devolved to councils, who are best placed to determine what is a priority for their areas. This will allow councils not just to tackle potholes but make improvements to road surfaces, saving money in the long term and improving our roads for everyone who uses them.”
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