Are these Britain’s worst potholes? The roads blighted by craters – and how it costs businesses and locals millions in repair bills… how bad is YOUR street?
- Worst street is said to be in St Osyth, Essex, blighted by hundreds of potholes
- But photographs reveal other pothole-ridden roads across parts of England
- ** Are you suffering from pothole misery? Email: [email protected] **
- READ MORE — Regions of country with worst roads conditions are revealed
The condition of Britain’s roads was today branded an ‘international embarrassment’ amid a pothole epidemic as some of the country’s worst streets were revealed.
London, the Midlands and North East have emerged as the worst regions for road condition – with shocking pictures showing the state of some routes in those areas.
It follows an Asphalt Industry Alliance report revealing today that the cost of clearing Britain’s pothole backlog has reached £14billlion – up nearly £1.5billion on last year.
Locals in St Osyth, a seaside community in Essex, have labelled Seawick Road as the worst street in Britain. Blighted by hundreds of potholes, they say taxi drivers refuse to come to their doors and emergency services have been struggling for access.
But photographs have also revealed the poor state of surfaces elsewhere across England in parts of North West London, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Blackpool and Bournemouth as well as Devon, Kent and Buckinghamshire.
ESSEX — Seawick Road in St Osyth has been billed the worst road in the country for potholes
LONDON — Potholes cover parts of Claremont Road in Cricklewood, North West London
LANCASHIRE — A large pothole on the surface at Coleridge Road in Blackpool
TYNE AND WEAR — Potholes on the very bumpy road surface of Clumber Street in Newcastle
The total number of potholes filled reported in this year’s survey has decreased by 16 per cent from 1.7million reported for the last two years to 1.4million in England and Wales
MIDLANDS
In Lincolnshire, Holly Bryant has unsuccessfully battled to fix a pothole covering the width of her village road.
‘On the lane I’ve lived on for eight years there are a couple of drains that flood and the highways take four to six weeks to come and clear it, so it floods the lane and then we get big potholes,’ said the 37-year-old from Osgodby.
‘They cleared the water this summer as it covered the whole width of the lane, about ten metres in diameter.
LINCOLNSHIRE — Holly Bryant, 37, of Osgodby, has unsuccessfully battled to fix a pothole
LINCOLNSHIRE — Holly Bryant has battled to fix a pothole covering the width of a local road
LINCOLNSHIRE — The pothole in Osgodby, which Holly Bryant has been trying to get fixed
‘At one point a local resident had taken the initiative and cleared a path to the ditch themselves because the authorities were taking so long.’
Ms Bryant, who owns businesses that make premium dog bedding and soft furnishings, added: ‘I got a puncture in my car before Christmas because of the stones, I had only driven half a mile and that was the only stony road. It costs me £250 to replace each tyre.
‘There isn’t a footpath and my next door neighbour is a mum with a small child and a dog, so it’s very hard to negotiate that bit of the lane when there is the water there.
‘The water is permanently above your ankle, we go on the Fix My Street website and we’ve tried to get local councillors involved. But the council just close the issue with ‘No further action’ on Fix My Street.
WEST MIDLANDS — A pothole on Marget Grove in Birmingham
‘The council says there is no funding, they say they will fix the drain for the flooding but when I raise the potholes they say there will be no further action because they can’t fix the pothole until the water is gone.’
She said that a town councillor and local parish councillors had been out to see the pothole, but ‘no one higher up’.
Richard Davies, highways executive member at Lincolnshire County Council, said: ‘Our policy is for potholes less than 40mm deep to not get immediate repair works, and over the last decade on this road we have carried out six jobs in total with nothing now outstanding in terms of potholes repairs.’
STAFFORDSHIRE — Pothole repairs are carried out on a road in Stoke-on-Trent on March 3
He said that going back to 2010 on the council’s records, they had received a series of reports on the road about its condition with five resulting in pothole repairs and two assessed as no immediate action required.
Mr Davies added that last year the council had 25 per cent of its roads maintenance funding withdrawn by Government and this had happened again this year.
He continued: ‘Every day we repair vital roads in Lincolnshire and are trying our absolute best to get as much done as we can with the resources we have. The county council has used crucial reserves and other measures just to keep the current state of the roads as they are, but we are fighting a losing battle.’
SOUTH WEST
A retired businesswoman has spent thousands of pounds on car repairs because of the pothole-riddled road next to her house.
Judith Lee, 63, of Burrington, Devon, said the potholes next to her house had cost her over £2,000 in repairs.
Miss Lee, a retired business consultant, said the potholes had inflicted 12 punctures on her Mercedes E350 in just a few months.
DEVON – Judith Lee, a retired business consultant, said potholes in Devon had inflicted 12 punctures on her Mercedes E350 in just a few months
DEVON – Judith Lee from Devon said the punctured tyres cost £100 each to repair and three cracked wheels cost her £1,500
She said the punctured tyres cost £100 each to repair and three cracked wheels cost £1,500.
Miss Lee added that she usually drives a Volvo estate but it is also being repaired because of punctures caused by potholes.
She said: ‘There are elderly people on this road who may need medical attention at some point but the emergency services won’t be able to get to them. Delivery drivers won’t come down here either.
DORSET — A series of potholes across Woodbury Avenue in Bournemouth
DEVON — Devon County Council member Ian Roome stands next to potholes in Barnstaple
‘You can’t drive down here very easily in an ordinary car. You have to creep down the lane and even then you hit potholes.
‘We’re continually getting punctures and we’ve complained to the council endlessly and we’ve got no help.’
Devon County Council said the road had been added to the list of future sites for remedial work and current high workload on nearby highways was causing the delay.
DORSET — Potholes cover parts of Jumpers Road in Christchurch
DEVON — Potholes photographed on the road between Newton Abbot and Totnes
The authority said it would continue to undertake regular safety inspections of the road.
Miss Lee added: ‘It’s just dreadful. I’m unfortunately living by myself now and my friends won’t come and see me because they won’t drive their car down the lane.
‘It has got to the stage where I have parked my car at the end of the lane, to walk down, and I have actually hurt myself, thrown my ankle, walking down in the dark because I walked in a pothole and I know where they are.
Mike Harris, who lives on the same road, said the road surface was ‘much better’ when he moved there in 2014.
He said: ‘It’s horrific. You can’t do more than about five or six miles per hour.
‘If you’ve got a low-level car, you’re scuffing the rubbish on the middle of the road while you’re going down the potholes and scraping the car on the potholes.
DORSET — Cars drive over potholes on Turbary Park Avenue in Bournemouth
‘The major problem is if you’ve got a problem, either a domestic problem or a health problem, and you need to get to the place quickly, you can’t.’
A Devon County Council spokesman said: ‘Our neighbourhood highways officers have visited Mill Lane to assess its condition and the road has been added to the list of future sites for patching.
‘However due to the current high workload facing our highways teams, no date has yet been scheduled for when these repairs will be carried out but we will continue to undertake regular safety inspections of the road.’
SOUTH EAST
In Essex, 29-year-old James Abinger came up with a creative way to protest a lack of action on potholes in his hometown of Harlow.
After his sister’s car was damaged by one, he and his friends, who were preparing to go on a fishing trip, decided to set their rods up by the side of a busy A road and fish in the ‘pothole lake’.
‘It was one of those spur of the moment things,’ Mr Abinger said. ‘Me and a couple of mates went to a cafe a couple of days after my sister hit a pothole.
ESSEX — Seawick Road in St Osyth which locals say is the worst road in Britain for potholes
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE — A large pothole at the junction of Harding Road in Chesham
KENT — A pothole filled with rainwater on Ellingham Way in Ashford
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE – A car drives over a series of potholes on White Hill in Chesham
‘We brought up that we wanted to go fishing, and I made a joke about being able to fish in the potholes. It became a way to raise awareness of them without mocking the council.
‘Unfortunately Essex Council will only do something about it when someone makes a joke out of it. I’ve lived in Harlow my whole life.
‘The roads are terrible, they’re very dangerous, especially for motorcyclists. I’m surprised no one’s had a serious accident.
KENT — Road safety campaigner David Ward measures a pothole in Tenterden
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE – Potholes – some of which have been filled in – on Manor Way, Chesham
LONDON — Potholes run down the middle of Warren Lane in Stanmore, North West London
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE — Potholes present a hazard to drivers on Chesham Road in Bellingdon
‘We plan to set up a page and get more people involved with the pothole fishing and hopefully get something done about it. Every road in Harlow has got one or two.
‘We will get a nice little community together, our audience is to appeal to anyone driving through Harlow. This way we can campaign indirectly without slandering them or getting into a row.’
But an Essex Highways spokesman said: ‘All compensation claims are investigated fully and damages paid if the Council has been liable.
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE — A pothole in the middle of Sunnyside in Chesham
BERKSHIRE — Repairs being made to potholes on a road in Windsor last week
‘The majority of claims are successfully defended because we are very rigorous in our maintenance of the network in order to protect taxpayers’ money.’
The spokesman added that officials carry out regular inspections of local roads and pavements, as well as having the public reporting defects through an online tool.
This defect is then recorded on a register and given a risk factor score, with the higher-risk issues fixed first.
NATIONALLY
Today, the Asphalt Industry Alliance survey claimed it would take 11 years for local authorities to fix every crumbling road in England and Wales, up from nine years in 2022.
Last year the trade body found it would cost councils £12.64billion to fill in all potholes – but since then the repair bill has risen by 11 per cent to £14.02billion.
The Daily Mail is campaigning for an end to the nation’s pothole plague, which is costing drivers millions in repair bills and putting cyclists’ lives at risk.
Overall, the AIA found there were 8,000 fewer miles of road classified as ‘good’ compared with last year, a fall of 4 per cent.
GREATER MANCHESTER — A pothole at the Bridge Street car park in Manchester city centre
And one in every nine miles of local road is now in ‘poor condition’ and likely to require maintenance in the next 12 months.
Despite the deteriorating state of the nation’s roads, only 1.4million potholes were filled in 2022/3, down from 1.7million in the previous year.
The AIA’s Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey found shortfalls in pothole repair budgets among local authorities had reached a record high.
Councils in England and Wales said they only received two-thirds of what they needed during the current financial year to stop local roads further deteriorating, the ALARM survey found.
LANCASHIRE — A cyclist makes their way over a pothole on White Gate Drive in Blackpool
Meanwhile, the compensation paid out for accidents and damage caused by poorly maintained roads has risen from £8.9million to £11.6million – despite the number of submitted claims falling.
This could be due to costly claims submitted in previous years along with a rise in repair costs driven by soaring inflation and supply shortages.
Last week Chancellor Jeremy Hunt pledged to put aside an extra £200million for councils to spend on pothole repairs in a boost for the Mail’s campaign.
But industry experts, campaigners and politicians warned more cash is needed to tackle the scourge. Rick Green, chairman of the AIA, said: ‘Potholes and the condition of our local roads remain key issues for the public and the Chancellor went some way to recognising this in his spring Budget.
TYNE AND WEAR — Preston Road near the junction with Cleveland Road in North Shields
‘But the additional £200million one-off payment for local roads in England, while welcome, is just not enough. It represents around 20 per cent of the average shortfall in English local authorities’ annual budgets and will do little to improve overall structural conditions and stem further decline.’
Tory MP Greg Smith, who sits on the Commons transport committee, added: ‘We have seen decades and decades of patchwork repairs and the reality is patchwork doesn’t work and we need to resurface Britain’s roads.’
LANCASHIRE — Potholes over Cherry Tree Road in Blackpool
David Renard, transport spokesman for the Local Government Association, said: ‘Councils work tirelessly to repair our local roads, which are the bedrock of our economy.
‘To improve the condition of our roads, the Government should provide a funding increase for councils, including meeting new inflationary pressures.
‘This would help councils focus on long-term investment in existing roads, delivering preventative maintenance and reducing the occurrence of potholes in the first place, which are more expensive to repair.’
AA head of roads policy Jack Cousens said: ‘The condition of some of our roads is an international embarrassment and it needs a concerted effort and investment to halt the decline.
WEST MIDLANDS — Potholes on Ravenhurst Road in the Harborne area of Birmingham
‘Half of councils have already cut back spending on road maintenance. National and local politicians have failed to look after their biggest and most important asset for years.
‘Sticking plaster solutions haven’t solved the problem, so what is required now is serious investment and serious action.’
His counterpart at the RAC, Nicholas Lyes, said the survey findings are ‘no surprise to anyone who is forced to endure our pothole-plagued roads’.
A Department for Transport spokesman said: ‘We are investing more than £5 billion from 2020 to 2025 into local highways maintenance, and recently announced an extra £200m at the Budget to fix millions of potholes a year.
‘This will help make journeys smoother and safer for all, repair dozens of bridges, and resurface roads up and down the country.’
** Are you suffering from pothole misery? Email: [email protected] **
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