Fifth of the country’s roads have potholes

Date posted: March 15, 2013

One in five roads in Britain have been affected by potholes as a result of bad weather, according to a recent study.

According to The Telegraph, “The Asphalt Industry Alliance, which represents companies who produce materials needed for highway repair, has warned of what it described as a £10 billion crumbling road crisis.”

Last year saw a substantial amount of rainfall and spats of torrential rain and flooding which has accounted for £338 million worth of damage to Britain’s roads. Councils across England and Wales spent £113 million filling potholes and forked out an additional £32 million which went towards settling compensation claims.

“According to the Alliance’s latest survey of highways engineering a fifth of the country’s local roads have a useful life of under five years,” The Telegraph reports.

“The Alliance says local authorities repaired 2.2 million potholes last year compared with 1.7 million in 2011.”

Despite already spending a substantial amount of money to repair road potholes, reports suggest it will cost a further £10.5 billion to get the UK’s roads back into ‘reasonable condition.’ However, this remains as a difficulty as the current spending shortfall in England is at £829 million a year. The survey says that repairing all these potholes and getting the roads back into a suitable condition would take around 12 years.

“Constantly having to patch up crumbling roads rather than using highway engineers’ skills properly, to ensure good road condition in a planned and cost effective way, is nonsensical and costly to the country,” said AIA Chairman, Alan Mackenzie.

Norman Baker, the local Transport Minister, said: “We are providing councils with more than £3 billion between 2011 and 2015 to maintain their roads and pavements.”