‘Beast from the East’ isn’t to blame for all the holes in our roads

The snow has gone from the south of England, but don’t think you’ve heard the last of the “Beast from the East” being used as an excuse for transport failings. No, it will crop up for months to come – every time you phone your local council to complain about a bone-shaking pothole.

Cold days – or more specifically freeze-thaw cycles – aren’t great for tarmac. Yesterday, the RAC revealed that it has had 218 “pothole-related” callouts over the past week, compared with half that number in the milder first three weeks of February.

But the real reason your next trip out on the roads is all-too likely to end with a thud and a burst tyre, or perhaps collapsed suspension, isn’t because we had a few days of Siberian winds but because of years of chronic under-investment in resurfacing roads.

The Government proudly claims to be lobbing £296 million into the country’s pocked and furrowed streets over the next five years through the “pothole action fund”.

It is a peculiarly English solution of endless patching. True, the pothole gangs criss-crossing the country looking for somewhere to stuff steaming dollops of tarmac are getting sharper.

Workmen from Telford and Wrekin Council’s “rapid response team” recently swept in to fill a hole in Wellington, Shropshire – 2,555 days after it had been reported, carrying out the work in front of residents who had gathered to celebrate the pothole’s seventh birthday. Precisely 1,535,352 potholes were filled in English roads last year – a triumph of public sector bean-counting as much as road maintenance.

What is missing, however, is regular resurfacing in order to slow the development of potholes in the first place. Admittedly many statistics on potholes come from the Asphalt Industries Alliance, whose vested interest isn’t hard to spot, but the figures – obtained through freedom of information requests – tell the story. Highways authorities last year spent an average of £12.6 million each on maintenance of road surfaces.

Yet to keep on top of road repairs they need to be spending an extra £5 million. The result is an evergrowing backlog, which means the average English road is now resurfaced only once every 55 years. If you’re lucky enough to come across a freshly surfaced street, the chances are that it was full of Morris Oxfords last time it was done.

While allowing road surfaces to run to ruin, councils are meanwhile dreaming up ever more inventive ways of extracting money from motorists. Last year they raised £820 million in parking fines – a figure which would have been even higher had drivers not succeeded in a quarter of their appeals against over-zealous enforcement.

Even if councils were just spending the money they raise from fines on resurfacing, our road system would be a very different place. It might even cope with an English winter.