Britain's pothole plague: why aren't they getting fixed?

As any driver, motorcyclist or cyclist can attest, the problem of potholes is pretty bad. The RAC estimates that there are at least one million potholes on Britain's 245,800-mile road network; drive a mile along a council-controlled road in England or Wales and you'll encounter an average of six potholes.

Last year, the Asphalt Industry Alliance's annual survey of local councils found that 17% of local roads in England and Wales were in a poor condition. In January, a report by the influential Public Accounts Committee of MPs labelled the state of England's roads a "national embarrassment" that is harming the economy, and "the social well-being of communities". The annual cost of poor highways was estimated last year by the Centre for Economics and Business Research at £14.4bn, mostly in the form of lost working hours.

What causes potholes?

Some claim the term "pothole" has Roman origins: potters who couldn't afford clay would steal it from under the surface of roads, creating deep holes; however, a more prosaic etymology – the holes are pot-shaped – is more likely. Potholes are primarily caused by weather, traffic and poor maintenance. Road surfaces become more prone to cracking as they deteriorate with use. Water seeps into cracks in the surface and weakens the underlying soil. And if water freezes and thaws, it creates cracks. Traffic then stresses and breaks up the surface, and often ejects both the asphalt and the underlying soil. With its cold, wet climate and its busy roads, the UK is particularly susceptible; the trend towards heavier cars – Autocar found in 2024 that the average weight of new models had risen by nearly 400kg over seven years – is making the problem worse. The UK also has more pipes carrying gas, electricity or broadband under its roads than most countries.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Why aren't they getting fixed?

They are: in the year to March 2024, two million potholes were filled in England and Wales. But it's not happening quickly enough. The underlying issues are sadly familiar: local authorities, responsible for 98% of Britain's overall road length, have had their funding squeezed for years – it fell by 17.5% between 2009/10 and 2019/20, mostly because of cuts in central government grants, and has only partially recovered since. The average cost of fixing a pothole is about £72 in England; but it can be much higher. In theory, most councils need to act when a pothole is 40mm deep and 150mm wide, but one in eight local authorities now won't consider fixing a hole unless it's at least a foot across (about 300mm). Another problem is that, since 1991, utility companies have been able to repair roads themselves after digging them up instead of paying highway authorities to do so: this had made them more willing to dig up roads and carry out repairs on the cheap. Many councils also carry out inadequate "patch and run" repairs; a significant percentage then have to be fixed again.

And what effect is this having?

The chief concern is that potholes cause accidents, when motorists or cyclists lose control or swerve out of their way. According to a widely quoted estimate by the National Accident Helpline, they caused 1,766 accidents between April and June 2020. Between 2018 and 2022, an estimated 451 people were killed or seriously injured because of potholes – of whom just under half were cyclists. In Argyll and Bute, a badly affected area, police noted the poor road condition as a factor in about 33 in every 1,000 collision casualties between 2014 and 2023. The charity Cycling UK says that up to 15% of the cyclists it helps after they've been injured in a crash had had an accident attributable to road defects.

What other problems do they cause?

The AA attended more than 643,318 breakdowns caused by potholes or similar road defects in 2024: mostly damaged tyres, wheels, steering or suspension. This represented a slight improvement on 2023, when there were 647,690, but was still its third-worst year on record. Between 2018 and 2024, the UK's drivers spent £9.5bn on repairing pothole damage, according to Kwik Fit. And costs have risen sharply: the RAC estimates that the average repair bill for a family car is now £460. Bad roads also add an estimated 1.3 billion hours of journey time annually. In 2023, local authorities spent about £824,000 on compensation and a further £166,000 on legal costs fighting claims for pothole damage. (It is difficult to win such claims: the authority has to have been specifically alerted to the pothole. Even so, councils such as Surrey and Essex are paying out thousands of claims every year.)

What is being done about it?

Politicians have been promising for years to fix potholes, which are a well-known bugbear for voters. In 2020, as chancellor, Rishi Sunak vowed to fill in 50 million holes over five years in England. Nevertheless, the problem has endured. In December, Labour allocated £1.6bn for repairs, enough to fix seven million potholes: three-quarters will go upfront to local councils; the rest will be held back until they can provide evidence of it being well spent.

Will things improve?

Not immediately. The Asphalt Industry Alliance thinks fixing the problem would cost not £1.6bn, but £16bn. The bad news is that Britain's roads are ageing: about 107,000 miles of roads in England and Wales (some 53% of the network) will reach the end of their structural lives within the next 15 years. There are hopes that innovation, not just money, might help the situation: AI is being used to identify road problems; Swansea University is developing a road surface that heals when it cracks; JCB now manufactures a "pothole killer" that can fix holes in eight minutes, about four times faster than a traditional "pothole gang". But despite the promises of improvements, there will almost certainly be bumps in the road ahead.

A national obsession

Britons have long been preoccupied by potholes: the line "four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire", in The Beatles' 1967 song "A Day in the Life", came about because John Lennon read an article about the terrible state of the town's roads. But over the past decade, the subject has become something of an obsession, perhaps not surprisingly, when 68% of people in the UK commute by car. The AA, British Cycling and other organisations now mark National Pothole Day every 15 January. Last year, The Daily Telegraph started a national campaign on the issue. Pothole activists and vigilantes have appeared, either mending potholes themselves or pushing for action: Mark Morrell, a retired Northamptonshire man known as "Mr Pothole", claims that his 11-year campaign led to 10,000 road repairs before he stopped last year. Others have tried humour: a Manchester road artist who calls himself Wanksy shames local councils into action by drawing huge penises around potholes.

The RAC has issued a handy spotter's guide to types of pothole, such as the "Great British Pothole" (also known as "the Classic"); the "Iron Maiden", which forms next to a manhole cover; or the "Alcatraz", so called because it's so big that you cannot escape it.