There was money announced in the recent budget for fixing potholes, but IAM RoadSmart says it’s nowhere near enough.
Road safety charity IAM RoadSmart has said that while the £420 million in new investment to tackle Britain’s pothole crisis is welcome, it doesn’t go nearly far enough and is but a drop in the ocean to deal with the issue.
The budget announcement on October 29 saw Chancellor Philip Hammond reveal the cash injection for our beleaguered roads, alongside a £28.8 billion fund to upgrade England’s motorways.
Hammond announced £25.5 billion for Highways England for major road upgrades between 2020 and 2025 and an extra £3.5 billion of funding allocated to major local routes, under the jurisdiction of local councils. The £420 million for potholes is in addition to an existing fund of almost £300 million.
However, IAM RoadSmart points to its recently conducted survey of over 7000 of its members, which discovered ow disillusioned they had become with Britain’s rotten roads.
Some 47% – more than 3400 respondents – said they had experienced damage to their car, commercial vehicle, motorbike or bicycle or personal injury as a result of hitting a pothole.
Around 90% of the members who responded had spotted a deterioration of some level in the roads they use, with just over 50% rating the state of their roads as ‘much worse’ in the past three years and 38% rating them ‘worse.’
Some 81% – close to 6000 people – said they had noticed ‘many more’
potholes in the past three years and, adding in the 13% who have seen ‘a few more,’ that gives a total of 94% who report more potholes.
More than 56% said they have to take avoiding action on every journey to dodge potholes, while 27% said they have to steer around a pothole every single day.