Pothole damage to vehicles hits highest level for five years

Pothole-related breakdowns reached a five-year high last year, new figures show.

The AA received 632,000 call-outs to vehicles damaged by road defects last year, a 16 per cent increase on the previous 12 months and the most since 2018, when 666,000 were reported following freezing weather.

Problems include punctures, distorted wheels, damaged shock absorbers and suspension springs. Potholes often form when water enters cracks in road surfaces, then freezes and expands.

The AA is part of a new coalition, the Pothole Partnership, that marked National Pothole Day today by sending a five-point plan to central and local governments to press for more effective road repairs. It includes making permanent repairs rather than using temporary patches, accelerating distribution of pothole-repair funding, and full transparency from local authorities on their progress in tackling backlogs. Other members are the National Motorcyclists Council, British Cycling, IAM Roadsmart, the British Motorcyclists Federation and machine-maker JCB.

Edmund King, the AA’S president, said dealing with pothole-related incidents nationwide costs about half a billion pounds, adding: “We have a vicious circle of: pothole formed; damage caused; pothole patched; pothole reappears with more damage caused. What we need are more permanent repairs.”

The RAC has announced it is joining forces with the technology company Metricell to encourage drivers to use new mobile app Stan to automatically collect data on road conditions via smartphone cameras. Metricell will share the information it receives with highways authorities.

Simon Williams, the RAC’S head of policy, said potholes would only get worse as temperatures dip in the coming weeks, adding: “We implore local highways authorities to completely resurface those roads in the worst condition and carry out more surface dressing between April and September on roads that are starting to deteriorate.”

In November, Rishi Sunak pledged to tackle “the scourge of potholes” with an extra £8.3 billion of funding across 11 years for local roads maintenance in England using money saved by scrapping HS2 north of Birmingham.

A Department for Transport spokesperson said this “decisive action” is “the biggest ever funding increase for local road improvements and enough to resurface over 5,000 miles of roads across the country”.