Manchester? It’s gone to pothole
City is named and shamed as the worst in UK at repairing its streets
MANCHESTER band Oasis famously sang ‘Don’t look back in anger’ – but motorists in the city might find that advice hard to follow after it was named the worst in the country for repairing potholes.
New figures show it fixed only 709 of its 3,697 reported potholes – a success rate of just 19 per cent, with fuming drivers left to pick up the bill for repairs to their cars caused by the scourge.
Last week it was reported that furious villagers in Cheshire’s Wrenbury-cum-Frith, south of Manchester, have mockingly renamed it Wrenbury-cum-Pothole, warning drivers that the poor condition of roads there will ‘break your vehicles – and your soul’.
Motorists in the region will be even more incensed when they learn that Bath, the city with the best record on the issue, has managed to fix 703 of its 719 reported potholes – or 97 per cent.
Manchester’s success rate is even worse than London’s, which has the most potholes at 26,165 but managed to successfully fix 11,572, or 44 per cent.
Last year, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to deal with the problem in England by injecting £8.3 billion of funding for local roads maintenance using money saved by the scrapped HS2 link north of Birmingham.
But the data collated for the poll by specialists at SmartSurvey from the FixMyStreet.com website for 68 cities in England, Scotland and Wales shows hugely varying repair rates. It reveals Edinburgh has the second worst record for fixing potholes with just 1,232 successful repairs from 5,538 reported – a fix rate of just 22 per cent.
Birmingham is the third worst offender, followed by Glasgow and Swansea. But many cities and towns do much better with Peterborough having the second best repair record of 94 per cent, fixing 2,105 of 2,242 potholes. Bristol, Truro and Durham make up the rest of the top five.
SmartSurvey boss Mo Naser said: ‘You could argue that bigger cities have more issues to attend to, but they also have bigger budgets and more staff to deal with them. For instance, Truro is a tiny cathedral city but the council fixes two in three reported potholes. Bath and Peterborough councils excel at responding to pothole issues.
‘Why do Bath, Peterborough, Bristol and Truro, whose populations and filed reports of potholes vary so widely, succeed while cities of comparable sizes to each of them struggle?’