The Chancellor announced £500million of additional funding to help fix Britain’s crumbling roads in yesterday’s Budget, but experts have scorned the amount as a ‘drop in the ocean’.
Current estimates put the nation’s pothole repair bill at a whopping £16billion with potholes reportedly costing motorists around £500million in vehicle repair bills last year.
Rachel Reeves said potholes had become a ‘visible reminder of our failure to invest as a nation’ and said the additional funding will provide repairs for one million craters.
However, a motor industry insider said this ‘won’t make much of a dent in the state of the UK’s roads’.
The Chancellor has announced £500m of funding to help fix Britain’s crumbling roads, but experts have scorned the amount as a ‘drop in the ocean’
Ms Reeves pledged an additional £500million to support local road repairs, marking a 50 per cent increase on the previous administration’s commitment and bringing the total funding for England’s road repairs to £1.6billion.
While the Government has said this ‘will go further than its commitment to fix an additional one million potholes across England each year’, many industry players have criticised the pledge as the Government ‘failing to get serious’ about the state of England’s roads.
Speaking in the House of Commons yesterday, Rachel Reeves said: ‘For all too long, potholes have been a visible reminder of our failure to invest as a nation. Today that changes.
‘With £500million increase in road maintenance budgets next year, more than delivering on our manifesto commitment to fix an additional one million potholes each year.’
Paul Barker, editor of Auto Express added that £500m won’t ‘make much of a dent in the state of the UK’s roads’
A drop in the ocean
Road safety organisations said the additional funding is ‘welcome’ but argued it doesn’t even scratch the surface in terms of the money required to fix the £16billion pothole issue the country faces.
IAM RoadSmart director of policy and standards Nicholas Lyes said: ‘Any additional funding to fix our crumbling and potentially unsafe roads is welcome, but with one-off repair bill of over £16billion, the amount promised by the Chancellor is a drop in the ocean of what is required.’
Bryn Brooker, head of road safety at dashcam maker Nextbase, agreed: ‘The new Government has failed to get serious about Britain’s crumbling roads. The £500million allocated for repairs won’t do anywhere near enough – experts say we need £16.3billion just to clear the current backlog.’
Paul Barker, editor of Auto Express added that £500million won’t ‘make much of a dent in the state of the UK’s roads.’
A third of councils only fix potholes when they reach a specific depth, leaving dangerous road ways for users and particularly cyclists
What’s a pothole? That’s anyone’s guess – how councils differ in their ‘pothole’ criteria
Potholes are one of the biggest issues drivers in this country face, but various reports have found there is a desperate need to improve efficiency of identifying and repairing craters to tackle the problem faster.
Local authorities take bewilderingly polarised approaches to classifying potholes, a recent investigation exposed.
The RAC and Channel 4’s Dispatches programme found that whether potholes get fixed or not depends entirely on a council’s own criteria.
What classifies a pothole as needing repair varies wildly from one region to another too.
A third of councils were found to only fix potholes when they reach a specific depth, irrelevant of how wide they are.
The complete lack of cohesion towards pothole repair means that dangerous potholes go unrepaired and there’s a continuous risk to all road users.
An RAC investigation found a variety of different approaches by 206 local councils when it comes to identifying and repairing potholes
Out of 206 councils approached by the RAC, just 76 (37 per cent) said they take a ‘risk-based approach’ to deciding which potholes to fix and how quickly.
However, what this risk-based approach entails is unknown, as none of the 76 authorities provided much information to explain their decision making.
Incredibly, three-in-10 councils (29 per cent) don’t state any public criteria for repairing potholes.
Potholes will often simply left to get bigger before they are deemed large enough by the elusive criteria to merit repair.
Among the 35 per cent of councils (71) that say they’ll only act on potholes if they meet certain barometers – the most common depth stated is 4cm (by 54 councils).
How much do pothole-related repairs cost drivers?
In January, This is Money reported that, in 2023, damage to vehicles caused by Britain’s pothole-blighted roads cost a staggering £474,000,000.
And in the first nine months of 2024, the AA attended almost half a million pothole-related breakdowns in the first nine months of 2024.
A report by trade body Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) published in March put the bill for pothole-related compensation claims at £15.2 million.
The AIA put the average cost of filling a pothole at £72.26, up from £66.54 in 2023.
Labour’s pre-election number crunching put the average pothole repair charge for a driver at £250.
Some links in this article may be affiliate links. If you click on them we may earn a small commission. That helps us fund This Is Money, and keep it free to use. We do not write articles to promote products. We do not allow any commercial relationship to affect our editorial independence.