Repairing all the potholes in Britain will cost £10bn
COUNCILS will have to spend a whopping £10billion to rid our roads of potholes, a report has warned.
It comes despite an increase in the number of holes filled by councils in England andWales over the past year.
The Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance report also said it would take a decade to bring all our potholeplagued roads up to scratch.
RAC head of roads policy Nicholas Lyes said the report “lays bare the pressure on local authorities who are grappling with crumbling road surfaces”.
He described potholes as a “nuisance” that “not only cause expensive vehicle damage but can also lead to serious injury or even worse”.
The number of potholes filled by councils in England and Wales grew by 13 per cent figures show.
Some 1.7 million potholes were filled during the past year, compared with 1.5 million during 2019/20, according to council responses to an annual survey by the Asphalt Industry Alliance.
The findings revealed that highway maintenance budgets have increased from an average of £20.7million to £23.8million year-on-year.
This is partly due to additional UK Government funding to fix potholes and promote more active travel, such as cycling, during the pandemic.
AIA chairman Rick Green welcomed the increase but warned that spending money to fill in potholes is “essentially in the past 12 months, a failure as it does nothing to improve the resilience of the network”.
Mr Green called for the approach to funding local roads to match the planning used for motorways and major A roads.
He said: “This commitment is vital to the nation’s post-pandemic reset, in which we will rely on our local road network to support recovery and underpin active travel goals.”
Duncan Dollimore, of charity Cycling UK, claimed it is “bizarre” that officials “expect local authorities to maintain their local road network without the funding allocated to other transport infrastructure”.
David Renard, transport spokesman for the Local Government Association, said councils “have been working hard to repair our roads”.