- £550 million spent on pothole damage
- Pothole Partnership tackles road decay
- £8.3 billion pledged for repairs
British motorists spent approximately £550 million on pothole repairs in 2023.
According to a partnership of driving groups, manufacturers, specialists, and NGOs, drivers spent £474 million last year. This amount was used to repair damage caused by cratering on the road.
The AA, one of the newly formed Pothole Partnership’s members, reported receiving 632,000 vehicle damage-related call-outs in the preceding year, representing a 16% increase over the previous twelve months.
Scrolling down shows our five-step guide to filing a claim for compensation for pothole damage.
“We frequently have a vicious circle in which potholes form, damage is caused, they are patched. And then they reappear with additional damage,” said Edmund King, president of the AA. Permanent restorations are precisely what we require.
The Mobility Association reported that its personnel dealt with various tire, wheel, steering, and suspension damage during the 632k pothole-related incidents its patrols attended in 2023; that’s its members.
The breakdown recovery provider estimates that approximately 2 million vehicles were impacted by inadequate road maintenance nationwide. This occurred in the previous year when tallied up.
Wet conditions will undoubtedly worsen the UK’s pothole crisis when another severe snap arrives this week.
Potholes frequently arise due to water infiltration into pre-existing fissures in the road surface. These fissures have developed due to traffic degradation and gradual deterioration.
This water then freezes and expands due to the onset of cold weather.
The re-evaporation of this water, precipitated by a rise in temperature, generates voids that are subsequently eroded by vehicular traffic.
Patchwork and substandard road surface restorations performed after utility and other construction activities exacerbate the likelihood of pothole formation.
Last year, it was estimated that clearing the accumulation of potholes in the United Kingdom would cost a record £14 billion, with the estimated cost of repairs increasing by nearly £1.5 billion from the previous year.
In March, the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) estimated that local governments in England and Wales would require eleven years to repair every deteriorating road, up from nine years in 2022.
ALARM data from the AIA showed a 4% decline in ‘excellent’ road miles (8,000) compared to the previous year.
Launch of the Pothole Partnership
The Pothole Partnership was formally introduced on Monday morning in observance of National Pothole Day. It primarily focuses on identifying resolutions to address the deteriorating state of roads in the United Kingdom.
Its initial action is to submit to central and regional government officials a five-point plan requiring greater efficacy in road restorations and complete transparency from local governments regarding their endeavors to address the accumulation of remedial work.
“Potholes are the primary concern of 96% of drivers and can be fatal for those on two wheels,” Mr. King continued. “Perhaps the Pothole Partnership’s pressure will result in permanent repairs.”
In response to the five-point pledge, the transport spokesperson for the Local Government Association, Cllr Darren Rodwell, stated: “Councils are diligently striving to address the £14 billion backlog of road repairs, taking into account the concerns of all road users. In doing so, they are adopting and learning from innovative techniques.”
Increased, consistent, and long-term funding for roadway maintenance year-round will help.
“To bring council highway departments closer to par with national highways and to provide them with greater certainty so they can develop resurfacing programs and other highway improvements to combat the scourge of potholes,” the government should allocate five years of funding to council highway departments.
The National Motorcyclists Council, British Cycling, IAM RoadSmart, the British Motorcyclists Federation, and JCB, a pothole correction machine manufacturer, are additional Pothole Partnership members.
The award-winning £165,000 Pothole Pro excavator conversion from the British heavy-machinery manufacturer was designed to repair potholes efficiently and effectively.
A three-in-one solution consists of specialized instruments for cutting, cropping, and cleaning a damaged road area.
This prevents the necessity for supplementary specialized apparatus or additional personnel, resulting in time and financial savings.
A typical crater can be permanently repaired in as little as eight minutes.
Early in 2022, This is Money obtained an exclusive first-person account of the PotholePro in operation. During this experience, we pitted the yellow excavator against a conventional road repair crew.
Four potholes were repaired in a twelve-square-meter segment of one crater-ridden street as the two competed.
PotholePro took 45 minutes and 11 seconds to restore and resurface the damaged segment.
In contrast, the conventional ‘handset’ team completed the task in 2 hours, 16 minutes, and 11 seconds.
In conjunction with technology company Metricell, the RAC announced on National Pothole Day that it had formed a partnership to encourage drivers to utilize a new mobile application called Stan, which uses smartphone cameras to capture data automatically regarding road conditions.
Metricell will share the information obtained with highway authorities by Metricell.
Simon Williams, chief of policy for the RAC, stated, “Potholes are not merely an annoyance. They endanger all motorists, and we worry that as the temperature cools, their condition may worsen.”
RAC patrols responded to 30,000 outages caused by potholes during the year, a 33% increase from the previous year.
The automotive services company dispatched roadside patrols to 29,377 breakdowns in 2023, equivalent to 80 daily breakdowns.
To combat the scourge of potholes, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak committed in November to allocate an additional £8.3 billion over eleven years for local road maintenance in England, using funds saved by abandoning HS2 north of Birmingham.
“A DfT spokesperson said £8.3 billion of rerouted HS2 funds is being used to mend potholes and resurface roads. “This is the highest municipal road improvement funding boost ever and enough to resurface almost 5,000 km nationwide.”
“With the current £150 million available to local governments, funding for most governments has increased by nearly a third since the previous year.”
“To ensure that this record-breaking increase in funding goes toward road repairs, we require councils to report frequently on where they are spending this money, allowing taxpayers to see how and where it is being spent.”
