Labour set to miss election pledge to fix a million extra potholes a year
Labour is set to miss an election manifesto pledge to fix a million extra potholes a year, a new report has warned.
The Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) said that the cost of bringing Britain's roads back up to good condition had reached £16.8 billion, a record high.
It comes after The Telegraph revealed that councils are leaving record-breaking numbers of local roads unrepaired.
Tuesday's report, compiled by a trade association made up of road maintenance companies, found that local streets across the country were resurfaced once every 93 years on average. That figure is even higher for London's local roads, where resurfacing takes place once a century.
Fixing every pothole in Britain would mean filling in one every 18 seconds every day for the next decade, the AIA added.
Although councils' road maintenance budgets are averaging £26 million a year, five years ago that figure stood at £31 million, which the AIA said showed how highways maintenance had been deprioritised by central Government.
David Giles, the Asphalt Industry Alliance's chairman, questioned on Tuesday whether Labour was going to meet one of its election manifesto commitments on pothole repairs.
'Is the new Government's manifesto promise to fix an additional one million potholes each year enough to have any real impact on the condition of our local road network? The findings of this year's ALARM [Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance] survey report suggest not,' he said.
Last year's report revealed that 2 million potholes were filled in during fiscal year 2023-24, ending in March. In the latest edition, that repair figure stands at 1.9 million potholes – with the decline suggesting that Labour will miss its self-imposed target.
The governing party's 2024 manifesto said: 'We will fix an additional one million potholes across England in each year of the next parliament.'
Conservative shadow transport minister Gareth Bacon slammed the Government, saying: 'Successive governments of all colours have let motorists down. Motorists in 2023 paid more than £40 billion in taxes – a combination of vehicle excise duty and fuel tax – and a very small proportion gets spent on maintaining the roads.
'As a result of that, potholes have become an increasing problem. The Government is currently boasting about spending up £1.6 billion on fixing potholes, but this doesn't touch the sides.'
Edmund King, the AA president, said a 'dismal two steps forward, three steps back' approach is being taken to tackling the 'pothole-plague'.
He continued: 'The UK is nowhere close to getting out of this rut. Alarm's increasing £17 billion backlog of road repairs once again underlines the size of the task ahead.'
Simon Williams, head of policy at RAC, said the figures 'paint a bleak picture of the state of the nation's roads' and confirm that 'in far too many parts of the country road surfaces are simply not fit for purpose'.
He added: 'The lack of investment in our roads is a false economy as it just leads to bigger repair costs in the future – something local authorities can ill afford.
'In the meantime, all road users continue to pay the price with uncomfortable journeys, avoidable breakdowns and repair bills that they only incur because potholes are so bad.'
Adam Hug, transport spokesman for the Local Government Association, which represents local authorities, said: 'It is no surprise to councils that the local roads repair backlog continues to rise, given inflation and huge demand pressures on local government statutory services.
'The funding increase in the last Budget was positive and must now be followed by a commitment in the spending review to a long-term financial package to tackle this backlog and put it into reverse.'
A spokesperson for the Department for Transport said: 'For too long, this country has suffered from a pothole plague, which is why we're investing £1.6 billion to help local authorities resurface local roads and fix the equivalent of up to seven million extra potholes over the next financial year.
'We want to achieve this in the most cost-efficient way for the taxpayer by providing local authorities with multi-year funding settlements, enabling them to better maintain their road networks and avoid potholes being formed in the first place.'
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