Can we talk about potholes please? Why are there so many?

[Irememberwhenitwasallfieldsroundhere]

Motorways seem to be reasonably well maintained but I recently drove from London to Oxford and the state of the roads is a disgrace.

Does anyone know why? Are councils or the highways agency not responsible for repairing the roads?

It's really shocking - my Waze tells me about a pothole every 10 minutes it seems.

Also, is there anything anyone can do about it? If enough people complain will councils fix the roads?

Ours too. Just a thin layer of asphalt. The weeds poked through again within about 3 weeks.

I agree with many here @Irememberwhenitwasallfieldsroundhere

Much bigger, heavier vehicles, and many more cars overall.

Cheaper materials used as many councils are brassick and close to bankruptcy.

Lots of rain.

Rock salt being thrown down over the winer eroding the roads over the years (and crappy repairs with crappy materials.)

It really gets me down, and makes driving a real chore. I am scanning for potholes half the time I am driving. Last week I went down a half mile long road that has been 40mph since it was opened 30 years ago (in a town 20 miles away.) I was trying to avoid the potholes, and I didn't notice it had changed to 30mph. (3 months ago apparently!) I noticed it part way down... I was doing 35-36mph and I went past a speed trap. I will very likely be getting a speeding ticket and I am so fucked off. If I had not been scanning for potholes I would have seen the first sign before the speed dropped to 30mph!

In our area potholes which are repaired are breaking down almost immediately because the tarmac filling the hole is not sealed around the edges with tar.

The council doesn't bother to check the standard of the repairs.

They can't repair then at the moment, because the weather means that the repairs won't 'fix' so within 48 hours the pothole will be back.

So the weather's to blame for both issues. The potholes appearing in the first place, and them not being repaired promptly.

Goodness knows when the rain will end and they can get on with it.

Another downside of our shit weather!

Everything has been contracted out, and with those contracts is a healthy profit margin. Cheap materials mean more profit. The British disease. Everything gets a bit shitter over time until things are so bad it's impossible to ignore.

Also, SEND spending in England has increased by approximately 58.5% in real terms over the past six years, which is equivalent to over £5 billion in additional spending. This rise is largely due to the growing number of children with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) and the associated costs of providing necessary support.

And don't get me started on the rubbish strewn across all the verges. I could cry when I'm out and about at the moment. It's heart breaking.

It stopped raining here 2 or 3 days ago. Not even the supermarkets have done anything about potholes; apparently they are responsible for their own car parks. My local Asda has several including a huge one.
Looks like we're all falling down the holes together.

Yep. And when council tax has to be put up so that the roads can be improved, the same people complaining about potholes on local Facebook pages, will be complaining about the rise in their council tax. And then when the work is done, then complain about the traffic issues due to the road works 😅

The Beatles were writing lyrics about potholes in the 1960s.

4000 in Blackburn, Lancashire

Agree.

I think the ones that are fixed aren't fixed properly.

We have a main road in our town.

It never has potholes for years.

Then a few weeks ago some gas works were done and the road was resurfaced.

Now it's got huge potholes.

Yes, SEND and social care.

Council tax is now basically a social care and SEN tax 🤷‍♀️ v little left over for anything else

My sibling’s car had to be taken home on the back of a transporter last week after she hit a huge, deep pothole that was obscured by torrential rain. Took out both her front tyres and she was lucky not to have an accident.

My car is tiny and I’m sure it looks like I’m taking part in a slalom when I’m out in it. One large pothole would probably write the car off.

There’s also a main road nearby which is actually subsiding on both sides. All that’s been done is a bit of tarmac blobbed over the worst of the cracks.

It’s absolutely dire.

It's a shame they can't create some kind of foaming spray to soften potholes, give everyone a can and we could all fix our local ones, at least temporarily.

This is the kind of thing we need AI working on.

Seriously making me consider leveing the country
Its ridiculous and i see no hope of it changing

If enough people complain will councils fix the roads?

In our neighbourhood, we have been told that it makes no difference if one person reports any particular pothole or if 1,000 people do.

However, please do report them ASAP, as the sooner they're reported, the sooner the local authority become liable for any damage they cause to vehicles.

Not that I’m an expert but didn’t they used to use hot tarmac and fill the holes properly and wait for it to set? Now it seems to be some kind of stone. The holes seem to come back again quite quickly in this area.

Funnily enough despite repeated reporting the state of local roads for years Labour fixed almost all our local potholes in the run up to a key Reform by election.

I can now confirm there are no pot holes left here for winning Reform not to fix.

No money - except car tax had never been higher. Motorists seen as easy targets, councils not managing budgets effectively.

Nothing to do with car tax.

My local council spent about half a million taking down the national flag from around the city! Money well spent!

@EstoyRobandoSuCasa However, please do report them ASAP, as the sooner they're reported, the sooner the local authority become liable for any damage they cause to vehicles.

I'm not sure this is strictly true. Councils are only liable if a pothole reaches a certain depth. Despite costing us over £2k to fix pothole damage, our county council wouldn't budge on them being liable. They did fill the pothole a week later though.

In terms of motorways most of the pot holes are in the lanes with the HGVs plus adjacent

An indicator that high use by large vehicles is damaging the roads. Generally our roads are repaired with a new layer of tarmac and not a full new surface. This new layer isn’t enough to take the high level of larger vehicles

Highways don’t have enough money to repair the roads so I would suggest
to raise money
Tolls on the roads or at the very least at U.K. entry points eg Dover
Other countries do it, why can’t we

We have the same, a road was 'fixed' as it was more pot holes than road and the fix lasted less than a week. But our local reform council are going to spend money sorting the ruined grass outside the council office 😡😡

Car tax doesn't go toward road repairs
It goes to central Govn and is distributed between all services such as education, healthcare and infrastructure

They do fix them. They need to be reported as dangerous or regular potholes. They fix the dangerous ones in a few days.

However, the weather has been wet and frosty. This makes potholes worse. Cars are heavier, making potholes worse. And there is only so much time for pothole teams to work because of the dark.