Councils must fix “pothole plague” or risk losing funding

Councils must publish how many potholes they fix per year, or risk losing their road maintenance cash – that’s the message from Prime Minister Keir Starmer as the government attempts to tackle what it describes as a “pothole plague”.

Announced late last year, the government pledged £1.6billion towards the repair and maintenance of the UK’s crumbling local road network, with this cash starting to be drip-fed to councils in April. 

But one stipulation from the Department for Transport is that councils must provide evidence of how they’re using the additional funding by stating how many potholes they have fixed, what percentage of roads are in what condition, what long-term preventative maintenance is taking place and how they are minimising disruption.

Fail to do so, and transport secretary Heidi Alexander MP says they “risk losing 25 per cent of their £500million funding boost”. 

In a statement, the Prime Minister was quick to blame the state of Britain’s roads on the previous Conservative administration. “The broken roads we inherited are not only risking lives but also cost working families, drivers and businesses hundreds – if not thousands of pounds – in avoidable vehicle repairs,” he said.

“British people are bored of seeing their politicians aimlessly pointing at potholes with no real plan to fix them. That ends with us. We’ve done our part by handing councils the cash and certainty they need. Now it’s up to them to get on with the job, put that money to use and prove they’re delivering for their communities.”

Much of what the government is now asking of councils mirrors the advice given by the Public Accounts Committee in its scathing report last year, which concluded that the DfT “[isn’t] taking its responsibilities and use of public money on local roads sufficiently seriously”.

This announcement comes shortly after the Asphalt Industry Alliance published its annual ALARM report which showed the cost to repair Britain’s broken roads has now risen to almost £17billion – far more than what the government has pledged. The number of potholes repaired in 2024 also fell slightly compared with the previous year, which appears at odds with Labour’s pre-election promise to repair an additional one million per year.

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