It’s hard to find something that angers British road users more than the country’s pothole crisis.
And irrespective of which party is in government, the issue has a tight grip on the attention of politicians.
When he was prime minister, Rishi Sunak was pictured staring in to one in Darlington.
And in Wednesday’s Budget, Rachel Reeves denounced the holes in Britain’s roads as “an all too visible reminder of our failure to invest as a nation”.
The Chancellor vowed that she would finally “change” this sorry state of affairs, with a £500m increase in road maintenance budgets next year.
However, campaigners have warned that the extra money “won’t touch the surface” and will fail to prevent the continued deterioration of Britain’s roads.
It is unsurprising that politicians are eager to be seen to be doing something about potholes, with a poll by the RAC in August identifying the “condition and maintenance of local roads” as drivers’ top motoring concern.
The situation also appears to be getting worse.
It is estimated that, on average, there are around six potholes per mile on council-controlled roads in England and Wales, with the RAC’s Pothole Index suggesting that drivers are more than one-and-a-half times as likely to experience pothole damage as they were 15 years ago. In 2023, 1.4 million potholes were mended across England and Wales.
The poor condition of local roads has serious consequences. According to Cycling UK, since 2017 close to one person per week has been killed or seriously injured while cycling due to potholes and road defects on Britain’s roads.
There is also a hefty economic price. In April, the Centre for Economics and Business Research suggested that potholes were costing £14.4bn in England alone in the form of vehicle damage, accidents, wasted time and higher emissions.
Despairing road users have been promised respite many times in the past. In November 2023, Sunak said the decision to scrap the Manchester leg of HS2 would free up £8.3bn to tackle potholes over 11 years.
However, councils viewed the pledge as almost meaningless because of the long time period it covered and the fact it was made before a full departmental spending review, which the Tories had delayed until after the election. Labour declined to commit to it in any case.
In its general election manifesto, Labour said that “potholes cratering our roads” were “a visible sign of the decline after 14 years of Conservative rule”, with the party promising to “fix an additional one million potholes across England in each year of the next parliament”. On Wednesday, Reeves said the £500m boost to the road maintenance budget would “more than” deliver this commitment.
Mark Morrell – Britain’s pre-eminent pothole campaigner – told i that Labour’s “pathetic pothole pledge” is “not going to touch the surface”.
Nicknamed “Mr Pothole” for his campaigning activities, Mr Morrell said: “It’s going to be Halloween horrors for road users going forward. [The Government’s] just played smoke and mirrors, which they typically do.
“Unless the Government resurface our roads and have a resurfacing programme annually, we’re just going to get worse,”
The Local Government Authority (LGA) welcomed the funding as a “positive” measure. However, in a briefing published on Thursday, the LGA said a £16.3bn backlog of road repairs would “continue to grow without more funding over a longer term and greater powers and flexibility for councils to maintain and improve their assets”.
Council sources told i that the pothole commitment will not transform the “declining asset” of the UK’s local road network.
According to a long-running survey of councils by the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA), the backlog of repairs on local roads has increased to its highest point in the past decade.
In a report on local roads in July, the National Audit Office said that councils attributed the increase in the backlog to “short-term funding” from the Department for Transport (DfT), “as well as to cost pressures from inflation and investment levels in road maintenance by central government not being sufficient”.
With councils having a legal duty to fill in potholes which are brought to their attention, town halls argue that the current funding environment has locked them into a reactive model of repairing potholes, while the overall condition of roads continues to deteriorate.
The status quo is especially unsatisfactory because local authority sources say mending potholes costs more over the long term than the maintenance work which would prevent them appearing in the first place.
The situation is exacerbated by the lack of notice councils receive about their funding settlements from central government, which are currently awarded on an annual basis.
With much road maintenance work outsourced, local authorities say this adds cost to their contracts and makes it harder for them to build supply chains to get on top of the issue.
Councils believe that a move by Labour towards longer-term financial settlements – something which Sir Keir Starmer has repeatedly promised – will improve things by helping them to act more strategically.
However, a comprehensive and properly funded road resurfacing programme is viewed as the only permanent solution to Britain’s pothole crisis.
David Giles, chair of the AIA, said it was “disappointing that the opportunity to deliver a step change was missed” in the Budget.
He said the extra £500m fell “short of the long-term funding horizon the sector has been calling for” and is a “fraction of what’s needed to prevent further decline”.
Mr Giles added: “Our hope was that the Chancellor would have announced a multi-year ring-fenced commitment allowing local authorities to plan and proactively carry out the effective maintenance needed to drive improvement in our local roads.”
Campaigner Mr Morrell said that while the wearing surface on roads typically lasts 15 to 20 years depending on its location and the volume of traffic, much of Britain’s local network is 70 to 80 years old, with some sections over 100 years old.
“We’re going into a winter period where frost gets into those defects, there’s cracking and crazing, and surprise, surprise, on heavy traffic roads, potholes can appear very, very quickly.
“Repairing potholes is a sign of a failure of a network and repairing potholes repeatedly is a waste of taxpayers’ money.”
He believes the country needs a £3bn-a-year inflation-linked resurfacing programme to end the “national embarrassment” of Britain’s “kingdom of potholes”. “Unless government do that, then we’re going to have this constant cycle.”
It means that there will be plenty of future campaigning work for the UK’s chief pothole activist.
As well as founding National Pothole Day on 15 January, he estimates that he has been responsible for the repair of over 10,000 holes and achieved £5m-worth of road improvements by campaigning or issuing legal notices to councils under the Highways Act.
Mr Morrell has previously driven a tank to the DfT to raise awareness of potholes. Next year he is planning to drive a mobile rocket launcher to the Treasury to up the ante.
“The idea is the Government need a rocket up their backside,” he said.