Labour breaks pothole promise as new figures show a fall in repairs

The number of potholes filled has dropped year-on-year, despite pre-election promises from the Labour Government to repair an additional one million annually.

Findings from the Asphalt Industry Alliance’s (AIA) annual ALARM report show that last year, 1.9 million potholes were filled across the UK. This, at face value, is an impressive number, but it might raise some eyebrows to know that in the previous year, two million potholes were repaired. 

Had the Labour Party been on track to deliver on its promise, this number should have risen significantly. Given that the quoted number of potholes filled last year is for January to December, one would have hoped Labour would have repaired an additional half a million potholes throughout their first six months in power. The shortfall of 100,000 pothole repairs in 2024 compared to 2023 puts them 600,000 behind schedule based on their own promise.

With 94 per cent of local councils the AIA surveyed reporting no tangible improvement in the condition of roads under their constituency over the past year, Auto Express asked the Government whether it had broken its pre-election promise to the public. 

In reply, a Department for Transport spokesperson promised even more, by saying that an additional £1.6 billion in investment will “help local authorities resurface local roads and fix the equivalent of up to seven million extra potholes over the next financial year.”

This investment is a drop in the ocean, however, as the AIA’s report states that the one-off cost to repair Britain’s roads now stands at a hefty £16.81 billion – up roughly £800 million compared to a year ago. Such is the state of Britain’s crumbling, declining infrastructure, the AIA claims that around one in six roads have less than five years of structural life left, which is no surprise given the average street is resurfaced every 93 years.

The RAC’s CEO Simon Williams said the AIA’s findings “paint a bleak picture of the state of the nation’s roads and confirm what a majority of drivers have known for a long time – that in far too many parts of the country, road surfaces are simply not fit-for-purpose”.

Nevertheless, the AIA’s chairperson, Simon Giles, said: “It was encouraging to hear the Chancellor recognise the importance of roads in the October Budget statement.” 

Giles, alongside the transport spokesperson for the Local Government Association, Councillor Adam Hug, called for local road maintenance to be ring-fenced in the upcoming spending review, as well as a “a five-year funded package for maintaining our local roads,ensuring they are treated on a par with our motorways and major trunk roads”.

Does more need to be done to fix the pothole crisis? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section...