Pothole prevention work up 15% as Govt tries to asphalt its way out of roads crisis

There could be some hope for an end to the UK’s pothole plague, because new statistics indicate that following recent Government intervention, there’s been a rise in surface-dressing, which is said to be the key method of pothole prevention.

Data from the Road Emulsion Association (REA) indicates that 44.4 square metres of surface dressing (enough to cover over 4,000 miles of road) was laid between April and September of 2025, compared with 38.5 square metres over the same period in 2024 – a 15 per cent increase.

Things could accelerate even further, however, because sales of bitumen emulsions – key ingredients for surface dressing – have also leapt up by a quarter in the past two years. However, the amount of surface dressing applied in 2025 is still a third down compared with 2012, when 64.4 square metres were laid in the same six-month period as above.

The REA’s consultant and secretary, Kevin Maw, said: “We reported a nine per cent increase in bitumen emulsion volumes in 2024, so to report a bigger increase for the second year running is encouraging. 

“We believe the surge in potholes over recent years directly correlates with the reduction in surface dressing,” he added. “[It’s] a successful preventative maintenance treatment that keeps roads in good condition.”

All of this follows a scathing report by the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee, which declared that the Government “neither knows exactly how local authorities spend its funding, because it is not ring-fenced, nor what it wants to achieve with it”.  

In response, the Government has begun hammering down on councils, threatening to revoke road-maintenance funding if they don’t provide sufficient evidence of works.

The head of policy at the RAC, Simon Williams, said the association welcomes the latest stats, adding: “We’re also very pleased to see the Government asking councils to show how much preventative maintenance work they’ve carried out over the last five years and how much they plan to do in this financial year. We remain convinced that prevention, rather than cure, is the answer to smoother, safer roads.”

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