Some councils in England take far more than a month on average to repair potholes, with some individual potholes remaining in place for 18 months, research by the Liberal Democrats has shown.
Based on freedom of information requests to councils in advance of next month’s local elections, the data uncovered nine councils where the average pothole repair time is four weeks or longer.
Newham council in east London took an average of 56 days per reported pothole, the responses found, with Lambeth, in south London, averaging 50 days.
Data from 2017-18 showed that the average repair time in Lambeth then was 14 days, the Lib Dems said, arguing that the increase since is due to significant cuts to local authorities’ highways maintenance grants.
Overall, of the 81 English councils which provided data, nine had waiting times for fixing potholes of 28 days or more, also including Stoke-on-Trent, Norfolk, North East Lincolnshire, Westminster, Southampton, West Sussex, and Hammersmith and Fulham.
On individual potholes, the longest recorded example was in Stoke-on-Trent, with a gap of 567 days between reporting and fixing, just beating the 556 days for one example in Westminster.
The Lib Dems said a £500m cut to highways maintenance budgets since 2020-21, only partly made up for by a £200m “potholes fund” in the budget in March, had caused a “pothole postcode lottery”.
In total, the councils reported 556,658 potholes in the year 2021-22, up from 519,968 in 2017/18. Derbyshire county council had the most reported potholes at 90,596.
Helen Morgan, the Lib Dems’ local government spokesperson, said: “Potholes have become a plague on our roads. Motorists should not have to spend their journeys choosing between hitting potholes or dangerously swerving around an obstacle course of tarmac craters.
“Hard-working people are paying huge bills to repair damage from potholes, while this Conservative government takes away the money local councils need to repair our roads. It is not fair for local residents in some areas of the country to be waiting over a year for road repairs because their council cannot afford it.”
The Conservatives have also used potholes as part of their local election campaigning. At the end of last month, Rishi Sunak used a trip to Darlington to pledge more action on the subject, staring into one in a much-used photograph from the visit.
Sunak announced plans for a more rigorous enforcement regime over potholes, plus the £200m fund, neither of which are new policies.
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “We’re investing more than £5.5bn to maintain roads up and down the country, and cracking down on utility companies that leave potholes in their wake, so motorists and cyclists can enjoy smoother, safer journeys.”
