Pothole-related breakdowns up 10 per cent in a year as Britain’s road condition crisis continues

The UK’s pothole epidemic is intensifying with the RAC attending 10 per cent more breakdowns resulting from motorists driving through potholes than a year ago.

Some 27,205 callouts to breakdowns due to poor road surfaces in the UK were received by the RAC in the year to the end of March. That compares with 24,906 during the previous 12 months, the motoring services company said.

The new figures are revealed after the RAC said it had been called out for a record number of pothole breakdowns in 2023, as the Government and local authorities fail to get a grasp of the nation’s crumbling road crisis.

Nearly 8,000 (7,904) call-outs for pothole-related damage were recorded by the breakdown assistance provider in the first three months of 2024 due to Britain’s deteriorating road surfaces. 

Roadside patrols have been called to attend an average of 87 pothole-caused breakdowns per day for faults including broken suspension springs, damaged shock absorbers and distorted wheels.

This is 22 per cent fewer pothole-related breakdowns than the RAC attended in January to March 2023 (10,076), which the company attributed to the ‘unusually mild weather’ seen at the start of this year.

Only seven days of frost (compared to the usual nine) were recorded in the opening three months of 2023, which could have potentially limited the number of brand-new potholes forming. 

During winter months, sub-zero temperatures normally cause more surface deterioration as water gets into cracks in the road, freezes and expands. 

The RAC’s Pothole Index – which measures the likelihood of suffering a pothole-caused call-out – suggested the warmer temperatures have helped the UK to ‘dodge a pothole bullet’. 

While call-outs for pothole issues were down in the opening quarter of 2024 compared to the same three months in 2023, they were up 53 per cent on the last three months of last year.

The RAC said this is a ‘clear sign that the UK is suffering a pothole epidemic as roads continue to crumble’. 

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

This is Money reported that pothole damage cost UK drivers £500million last year.

Pothole-related insurance claims have also soared 40 per cent in a year, also reaching record-high levels. 

Construction work for the HS2 railway taking place at Wendover Dean Viaduct in Buckinghamshire. Minsters have claimed that funds from the cancelled project will be used to improve road maintenance

The RAC is calling on local authorities to assign recent Government funding to better tackle the road surface crisis.

In October, the Government announced it would provide £8.3billion of extra funding over 11 years to fix potholes in England.

This was part of the Network North strategy to use money saved by scrapping the planned extension of HS2 north of Birmingham.

However, the cost of bringing pothole-plagued local roads in England and Wales up to scratch has been estimated at £16.3billion, according to the latest analysis by the Asphalt Industry Alliance.

RAC head of policy Simon Williams said: ‘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 £8.3billion 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 per cent 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.

‘And now is the time for preventative action to be taken, as it’s between the warmer months of April and September when vital surface dressing work can be carried out to extend the life of roads. 

‘Sadly, government data we analysed shows 60 per cent of English councils didn’t do any such work in the 2022-2023 financial year.’

A Department for Transport spokesperson responded: ‘Local highway authorities are responsible for maintaining their road networks, but we are supporting them with £8.3billion of reallocated HS2 funding over the next 10 years, the biggest ever increase in funding for local road improvements which comes on top of an existing £5.5 billion fund.

‘Local authorities received the first £150million of this increase within weeks of announcing our additional funding in October, and will receive a further £150million this year to continue improving local roads.’

Darren Rodwell, transport spokesperson for the Local Government Association, added: ‘Councils share the concerns of all road users with the state of our roads and are doing all they can to tackle the £16.3billion backlog of road repairs, including learning from and adopting innovative techniques.

‘Greater, long-term and year-on-year consistency of funding for the maintenance of all parts of our highways will help them achieve this.

‘The Government should award council highways departments five-yearly funding allocations, to bring them on a par with National Highways, to give more certainty so they can develop resurfacing programmes and other highways improvements, to help them tackle the scourge of potholes.’