Wet weather and rough roads cost drivers billions
Britain’s crumbling roads are costing drivers billions of pounds in repair costs, as wet weather threatens to worsen the country’s potholes.
There were 42 flood warnings and 157 flood alerts in place in England yesterday as heavy rain again swept the country. The south of England has experienced its wettest February on record.
Lancashire Council has blamed wet weather for a backlog of pothole repairs, and said officials were receiving “significant and unprecedented reports of structural defects” on the county’s highways.
The average cost of repairs due to potholes was £718, with common problems including punctures, distorted wheels, damaged shock absorbers and broken suspensions.
Most potholes are caused by water seeping into cracks in the road.
There are an estimated one million potholes blighting Britain’s roads. Last year the AA received 632,000 call-outs to vehicles damaged by road defects, up by 16 per cent.
Rod Dennis, a spokesman for the RAC, said the country’s pothole epidemic was “an even bigger issue for drivers than even the cost of fuel”.
“A huge number of councils across the country are barely able to do anything substantial in terms of road repairs so they are simply patching up potholes,” he said.
“If all you’re doing is patching, you’re not actually improving the safety of that road. I think there’s every likelihood that potholes will continue to get worse.”
Potholes are a nationwide problem. In January, Glasgow was named as the pothole capital of Britain, after reporting app FixMyStreet found the city to have 11.7 potholes left unfixed for every 1,000 residents. Edinburgh was second, with 8.2 unfixed per 1,000 residents.
Research by Halfords found that a quarter of motorists say their vehicle has been damaged by a pothole in the previous 12 months, causing an estimated £7.5bn in damage.
Cash-strapped councils have been accused of ignoring the issue. Central government spending on local road maintenance fell from £4bn in 2006 to £2bn in 2019, according to the Local Government Association.
Last November, Rishi Sunak pledged to tackle the “scourge of potholes” with an £8.3bn fund for roads in England. But Zac Ellis, a tyre fitter in East Grinstead, West Sussex, previously told the BBC that he saw “easily five, six, seven customers a day coming in with pothole damage”.
This week, it was reported that Somerset council had told a 101-yearold woman that potholes on her road were her problem to fix. The council said maintenance of the road was shared because it was a public right of way, rather than a public road.