Wet weather brings more misery on country’s crumbling roads
Britain’s crumbling roads are costing drivers billions of pounds in repair costs, as this week’s wet weather threatens to worsen the country’s pothole epidemic.
There were 42 flood warnings and 157 flood alerts in place in England yesterday as heavy rain continued to sweep the country, after the south of England experienced its wettest ever February on record.
In Dorset yesterday, emergency repair works were underway to fix a 8×1.3 metre crater in the road caused by recent flooding in Christchurch.
Further north, Lancashire Council has blamed the wet weather for a backlog of pothole repairs, and said officials were receiving “significant and unprecedented reports of structural defects” on the county’s highways.
Most potholes are caused by water seeping into cracks in the road.
There are an estimated one million potholes blighting Britain’s roads. Last year the AA received 632,000 callouts to vehicles damaged by road defects – an increase of 16 per cent.
Research by Halfords found that a quarter of motorists say their vehicle has been damaged by a pothole in the previous 12 months, causing an estimated £7.5bn in damage.
The average cost of repairs was £718, with common problems including punctures, distorted wheels, damaged shock absorbers and broken suspensions.
Cash-strapped councils have been accused of ignoring the issue. But central government spending on local road maintenance fell from £4bn in 2006 to £2bn in 2019, according to the Local Government Association (LGA).
Last November Rishi Sunak pledged to tackle the “scourge of potholes” with an £8.3bn fund for roads in England.
Drivers can claim compensation for pothole damage. But the Halfords research, published last September, found that only £900,000 was paid out in the previous 12 months.
Rod Dennis, a spokesman for the RAC, said the country’s pothole epidemic was “an even bigger issue for drivers than even the cost of fuel”.
“A huge number of councils across the country are barely able to do anything substantial in terms of road repairs so they are simply patching up potholes,” he said.
Mr Dennis said: “If all you’re doing is patching, you’re not actually improving the safety of that road so you’re not making it any less likely to get potholes again in the future…So I think there’s every likelihood that potholes will continue to get worse.”
Zac Ellis, a tyre fitter in East Grinstead, West Sussex previously told the BBC that he saw “easily five, six, seven customers a day coming in with pothole damage. It is a pretty constant problem.”
This week, it was reported that Somerset council had told a 101-year-old woman that potholes on her road were her problem to fix. The council said maintenance of the road was shared because it was a public right of way, rather than a public road.
Potholes are UK-wide problem. In January, Glasgow was named as the pothole capital of Britain, after reporting app FixMyStreet found the city to have 11.7 potholes left unfixed for every 1,000 residents. Edinburgh was second with 8.2 unfixed per 1,000 residents.
