Potholes Are On The Rise

The annual potholes report

The Department for Transport (DfT) has just released a new report on the condition of our roads and unfortunately, it’s not good news. The annual report shows that over the last two years, there has been no improvement in potholes on Britain’s roads.

The annual report looks at key information on road conditions including expenditure, road surface conditions, highway maintenance treatments and skidding resistance. The report is put together using visual surveys and automated survey machines by Local Authorities and the National Highways to track the condition of road surfaces. The data in this report has been collected from April 2020 – March 2022.

One-third of all local roads in England are now in need of urgent maintenance and repair.

Department for Transport

A third is a huge amount and unfortunately, won’t come as a surprise to many. DfT only takes statistics from Local Authorities with valid data available which in March 2022 totalled 109 local authorities.

Further data showed that 79% of them reported an improvement or no change in the amount of A roads categorised as needing repair or maintenance between March 2013 and 2022.

Pothole funding is at risk of being cut

Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently, you’ve no doubt heard of the cost of living crisis. The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has confirmed that there will be spending cuts across all government departments in the immediate future. This, coupled with fears of a £500m cut to the £2.5bn pothole fund could mean our roads are only going to get worse. That £500m that we could possibly lose would be enough to fix around ten million potholes.

Are potholes dangerous?

Yes, potholes are dangerous and have caused an additional 225 breakdowns a day in November alone according to the AA. This is due to heavy rainfall at the start of the month. They have also warned how potholes can cause death – with two recent coroner reports stating two cyclists dying after hitting one.

The president of the AA warns that this will only get worse as we get hit with more rain and a further drop in temperatures.

Here’s a look at what happened to one car after hitting a pothole near our Cranleigh site

Where do potholes come from?

Unfortunately for us, our British weather system is ideal for creating potholes. Cold weather plus lots of rain is the perfect catalyst. Cracks appear in the roads and rain settles in the cracks then freezes as the temperatures drop. When it freezes, it expands creating a bigger crack. If this continues to happen the cracks continue to grow until one day, you have a brand new baby pothole in your road.

Which area of the UK has the worst pothole problem

It will come as no surprise that a lot of the places with the most potholes are northern, wetter areas, but did you expect to see sunny Cornwall so high up the list?

Areas with the highest number of reported potholes

*In cases where the councils have fixed more potholes than reported, this is due to the time period when the data was recorded and the way the data is reported. The reported figure may only include numbers reported by the public, whereas the total number repaired will include those spotted by council road inspectors.

Areas with the greatest volume of repaired potholes during the timeframe

Table data taken from the AA report

We can fix cracked and buckled alloys caused by potholes

Our team at Gatwick specialise in saving buckled wheels and cracked alloys damaged by potholes. We have spent thousands investing in the best equipment so we can provide a safe and cost-effective repair to pothole-damaged wheels. The most common wheels we see are from luxury vehicles such as BMW, Jaguar Land Rover and Mercedes as typically, these have the biggest rims causing the most risk. We book up quickly, especially over winter but give our team a call as we can usually squeeze in an extra repair or two a day.

Here’s one repair we’re really proud of:

If you want more to read up on regarding potholes, jump straight to our Pothole 101 blog!