Pothole plague will take £14bn and 11 years to fix
THE cost of clearing Britain’s pothole backlog has reached a record high of £ 14billlion – up nearly £1.5billion on last year, a report revealed yesterday.
It would take 11 years for local authorities to fix every crumbling road in England and Wales, up from nine years in 2022, according to a survey by the Asphalt Industry Alliance.
Last year the trade body found it would cost councils £12.64billion to fill in all potholes – but since then the repair bill has risen by 11 per cent to £14.02billion.
The Daily Mail is campaigning for an end to the nation’s pothole plague, which is costing drivers millions in repair bills and putting cyclists’ lives at risk. Overall, the AIA found there were 8,000 fewer miles of road classified as ‘good’ compared with last year, a fall of four per cent. And one in every nine miles of local road is now in ‘ poor condition’ and likely to require maintenance in the next 12 months.
Despite the deteriorating state of the nation’s roads, only 1.4million potholes were filled in 2022/3, down from 1.7million in the previous year. The AIA’s Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey found shortfalls in pothole repair budgets among local authorities had reached a record high. Councils in England and Wales said they only received two-thirds of what they needed during the current financial year to stop local roads further deteriorating, the ALARM survey found.
Meanwhile, the compensation paid out for accidents and damage caused by poorly-maintained roads has risen from £ 8.9million to £11.6million – despite the number of submitted claims falling. This could be due to costly claims submitted in previous years along with a rise in repair costs driven by soaring inflation and supply shortages.
Last week Chancellor Jeremy Hunt pledged to put aside an extra £200million for councils to spend on pothole repairs in a boost for the Mail’s campaign.
But industry experts, campaigners and politicians warned more cash is needed to tackle the scourge. Rick Green, chairman of the AIA, said: ‘ Potholes and the condition of our local roads remain key issues for the public and the Chancellor went someway to recognising this in his Spring Budget.
‘But the additional £200million one-off payment for local roads in England, while welcome, is just not enough. It represents around 20 per cent of the average shortfall in English local authorities’ annual budgets and will do little to improve overall structural conditions and stem further decline.’
Tory MP Greg Smith, who sits on the Commons transport committee, added: ‘We have seen decades and decades of patchwork repairs and the reality is patchwork doesn’t work and we need to resurface Britain’s roads.’
David Renard, transport spokesman for the Local Government Association, said: ‘Councils work tirelessly to repair our local roads, which are the bedrock of our economy.
‘To improve the condition of our roads, the Government should provide a funding increase for councils, including meeting new inflationary pressures.
‘This would help councils focus on long-term investment in existing roads, delivering preventative maintenance and reducing the occurrence of potholes in the first place, which are more expensive to repair.’
‘Patchwork repairs just don’t work’