Potholes becoming a national disgrace, warns RSTA

The Road Surface Treatments Association (RSTA) claims that potholes have gone from being just a local problem to being a national disgrace.

Marking the fourth annual National Pothole Day, the association argues that the lack of investment in road maintenance means that it would cost £12.06 billion and take 13 years to address the backlog of potholes in England and nine years in Wales.

The RAC reported that between January and March 2017 it dealt with a 63 per cent increase in pothole-related breakdowns, while the Tax Payers’ Alliance calculated that local authorities pay out over £8 million annually in compensation claims for road-surface related vehicle damage.

Howard Robinson, RSTA chief executive, said: “Decades of government under-funding has deprived local councils from having the resources to carry out comprehensive planned maintenance. Instead, we have inefficient patch-and-mend of a never-ending pothole plague where hard-pressed councils take one step forward and two steps back.

“The cumulative impact of the potholes in your local area has significant national social and economic consequences that government would do well to take note of. It is not just the personal cost of potholes, it is also the cost to the national economy. At a time when post-Brexit, the government wants to show that Britain is open for business the very transport system that carries 97 per cent of our traffic is well below the standard of our chief European competitors.”

Meanwhile, figures published by Jesse Norman, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Department of Transport, has revealed that nearly 400 cyclists have been killed or maimed over the last decade due to poorly maintained local roads. Between 2007 and 2016, there were 22 cyclist deaths attributed to a poor or defective road surface. Over the same period there were 368 reported serious injuries.