A hole lotta…

Currently, there are no clear answers as to whether avoiding a pothole could be viewed as an exception to the rules.

With motorists forced to make dangerous manoeuvres to avoid potholes, experts are calling on authorities to clarify.

Quotezone.co.uk CEO Greg Wilson said: “With the cost of living crisis pushing insurance premiums up, costly damage to vehicles due to potholes is the last thing drivers need. We are calling for more information on how drivers should tackle problematic potholes in their area.”

Broken

Pothole-related breakdowns continue to rise rapidly despite the Government pledging more cash to tackle Britain’s crumbling roads.

So far, there has been little evidence of local authorities receiving sizeable budget increases to deal with epidemic-scale problems.

The RAC attended nearly 8,000 (7,904) breakdowns due to bad road surfaces in the first quarter of 2024, up 53% from the last three months of 2023.

Over the past year, pothole-related breakdowns are up by 10%, with the RAC attending 27,205 breakdowns, 2,299 more than the 24,906 incidents it attended the previous year.

Compared to 2006, when the RAC first began tracking these faults, drivers are now nearly twice as likely to experience pothole damage.

Could be worse?

RAC head of policy Simon Williams said: “While many would rightly say the roads are terrible, we believe they would have been far worse had we not had such a mild winter.

“We feel drivers have dodged the pothole bullet as the lack of widespread sub-zero temperatures has masked the true state of our roads.

“After all, all the cracks left by years of declining road maintenance budgets can’t easily be filled. Even though the Government has given councils an additional £8.3bn for road maintenance from the cancellation of the northern leg of HS2, we know this is only enough to resurface 5,000 miles of roads – the equivalent of just 3% of all England’s local roads.

“To make the most of this funding, we implore local authorities to focus their efforts on resurfacing the worst roads in their areas rather than pointlessly trying to patch pothole-ridden roads that can’t be saved from further decline.”

Crumbling realities

However, government data analysed by the RAC shows that 60% of English councils didn’t do any such work in the 2022-2023 financial year.

James Barwise, policy lead at the Road Haulage Association (RHA), said: “We welcome the Government’s recent announcements around the £8bn worth of funding to repair potholes. However, it is important that this funding is ringfenced and paired with other funding sources.

“If local authorities are provided with the tools to get on with the job, the cost of repairing potholes decreases considerably.”

“Perhaps it’s a case of temporary speed reductions in problematic areas or alternative route diversions to reduce the risk of incidents and stop roads from deteriorating further.

“This problem isn’t going away in the foreseeable future, so we need manageable solutions and practical information to protect all road users from harm and safeguard their finances.”

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