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Panorama The Pothole Problem (08 Dec 2025)
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00:00our roads are plagued by potholes a pain to most of us but dangerous to some he appears
00:17to have hit a large pottle in the road surface he sustained unsurvivable injuries and was
00:21pronounced deceased at the scene record funding is going into local roads so why are they such
00:28a mess we're allowing the roads to deteriorate faster than they're able to repair them we've
00:36been told much of the money that is spent is being wasted people watching our program are
00:41they getting value for money from their pothole service absolutely not because they're basically
00:47paying for repairs at the council know we're going to fail I'd say it's pretty catastrophic
00:53situation and if we don't get on top of it how bad could it get could roads be closed I think it's a
01:01place we could get you considering yes certainly we dig deep into the pothole problem the UK depends on
01:15its roads most of us use them every day but we have a big problem millions of them in fact potholes
01:25we've all experienced this kind of road maybe even got used to it potholes everywhere earlier this year
01:33the Commons Public Accounts Committee released a damning report England's local roads have been
01:40branded a national embarrassment road users are being put at risk by highways riddled with potholes
01:46the RAC estimates the average pothole related repair for anything more than a puncture cost the driver
01:55nearly 600 pounds potholes and crumbling roads have become a national obsession mate I've just seen you
02:03stamp it three times I could walk on it and stamp it down harder seriously that's a repair the council
02:11turned up this week and started filling this edge of the lay-by they just did this random piece of
02:17tarmac which is incredibly spongy I'm standing on it and moving but a hundred meters up the road
02:22there's a huge pothole this pothole has been been filled by the council which leaves me with this
02:28several yards down the road come and sort it out some people are so frustrated they're trying
02:34to fix the roads themselves including National Treasure Sir Rod Stewart this is the state of the
02:43road and here we are here in in Harlow and it's been up in places and we and the boys thought we'd come to it
02:50ourselves oh wow it's really a lot here aren't they yeah fields getting bounced around yes
02:58fed up with the state of the roads Juliet in Hastings uses humor to fight back first she's got to
03:08measure the hole so this plate 24 centimeters so these would qualify as potholes not that one or
03:15that one but these three would definitely each council has its own definition of a pothole a
03:21pothole might qualify to be fixed in one area but not in another here in
03:28East Sussex to warrant a repair the hole would need to be 30 centimeters wide and four centimeters
03:35deep this is a nice one nice is in for me not for everyone else do the plate test that's really bad
03:43Juliet creates mini scenes using dolls and posts them on social media she's careful about safety she
03:53chooses quiet roads and the dolls are only in place long enough to take the photo and this scene
04:00is a park and the water is a boating lake so you kind of know how it's going to look more or less I take
04:09that two or three happy yeah do you think it makes a difference yeah this one will probably
04:15as soon as I do that this one will get filled whether um they go and look at the others well
04:23there's loads I don't know yeah we're all very frustrated about the situation but if I can like bring
04:29a little bit of humor into something quite dire and grim then why not Juliet's work is well known in Hastings
04:40she has 12 000 followers on Facebook they're brilliant absolutely brilliant and something's
04:47got to be done to make them hopefully start start caring for the roads again like they used to years
04:54ago you never saw roads like this never never but well done keep it up thank you that's lovely isn't it
05:00one of the potholes Juliet highlighted was filled in by the council two weeks later East Sussex County
05:09Council says every pothole reported is inspected and repairs are prioritized by size depth and location
05:17it says its roads are carrying more and heavier traffic than decades ago at the same time the cost of
05:25materials and labor has significantly increased and the available budget has decreased so Juliet uses
05:32humor to highlight the problem of potholes but look at the state of this road there's nothing funny about
05:38cycling or even driving on a on a road like this the top has almost all gone over the last decade
05:45councils in England and Wales have spent more than a billion pounds filling 17 and a half million potholes
05:53that's the equivalent to one every 18 seconds every day for 10 years that is a lot of potholes so
06:04how do they happen a pothole will begin life as a small crack small defect in the road and then
06:11gradually water will get in and water is the enemy of the roads particularly in the winter when water has
06:17got into below the surface then freezes expands and cracks the road and all of a sudden you see
06:23a pothole but we've also changed the material we use to surface our roads in the 90s there was a move
06:31to thin surfacing type materials in doing that we've made the material more open and that invites the
06:38water in so what we're seeing is that once they start to crack they unravel really really quickly and
06:44once you've got a pothole you've got a problem potholes cost drivers because of the damage they do to cars and
06:52councils pay the price to in legal claims but the cost of potholes is more than just money
07:00Lynn's husband Gary loved motorbikes he was very lovable lots of friends would do anything for anybody
07:14loved his kids loved his grandchildren love the dogs loved his motorcycles really two years ago a journey
07:24on a rural road in Somerset changed everything as far as I know Gary was going to a farm shop somewhere
07:30to get some cheese I thought it was a bit of she didn't text me but I thought perhaps he's just not
07:35charged his phone or something could you know what it's like so I go to work come home from work and
07:40there's a policeman stood outside my house what did the policeman tell you can you remember not really
07:46just that there had been an accident Gary passed away and then when it starts to sink in it's like
07:52having your whole world ripped apart everything what you knew is just suddenly gone in a flick of
07:58a switch the inquest found Gary's accident was directly caused by a pothole and what do you think
08:04about the fact that it was a pothole angry because that could have been avoided because it wasn't a
08:14little pothole why was it not repaired we pay our taxes to help for the pair repair of the roads they
08:21need to be more mindful about not just the main roads and the motorways but the the minor roads
08:26as well in my eyes potholes are life-threatening because they took my husband's life it took your
08:31husband's life what what did it do to you well it took my life as I knew it at that time in Great
08:38Britain last year road defects or material on the road played a part in 20 deaths and more than 500
08:46serious injuries Gary's accident took place on a sea road a type of small road that makes up more
08:53than a fifth of England's local road network they are the local authorities responsibility to inspect and
09:01maintain some are only checked once a year so this is a pothole in question the area measured approximately
09:10two meters long by one meter in width if you caught that you can see how you'd be in trouble straight
09:17away then this is when they filled it in so they filled it in yeah he appears to have hacked a large
09:23pothole in the road surface which upset his balance he sustained unsurvivable injuries as a result and was
09:29pronounced deceased at the scene Somerset council says Gary's accident was heartbreaking and it offers
09:43its sincere sympathies to his friends and family it adds it has fully assisted with all investigations
09:51and it took action to repair the pothole within 24 hours of being made aware of it
09:59a big part of the pothole problem comes down to money the autumn 2024 budget gave a record amount for
10:10local highways maintenance across England including pothole repairs nearly 1.6 billion pounds
10:17that's up 500 million pounds on the previous year in addition local authorities also spend money from their own
10:28budgets to maintain their roads david giles is chair of the asphalt industry alliance whose members work
10:37across the highways industry local authorities have two funding streams there's a big chunk that comes from
10:45central government and then there's a chunk that comes out of their own purses that funding from the central
10:54part the government part has basically been woefully inefficient to properly maintain the roads the Alliance
11:02carry out an annual independent survey asking local authorities across England and Wales about the state of their roads over the
11:1230 years of the survey we've seen continual decline there's a shortfall between what the local authorities need and what they actually get
11:21so what we're doing is we're allowing the roads to deteriorate faster than they're able to repair them it has been decided less money will be put in the roads than is needed
11:33the survey david overseas asks councils how much money they would need to fix their roads and how much money they are actually getting
11:42from the government even though the government pledged nearly 1.6 billion pounds for 2025-26 the replies
11:51to the survey suggested councils in England and Wales would need a one-off sum of 16.8 billion pounds to bring roads back into an ideal condition
12:01that figure has risen by 42% since the 2016 survey
12:10Anka Ruthers is director of environment and transport at Leicestershire County Council and is a former president of the group which represents local authorities on transport
12:20We're seeing more and more defects in the road network that authorities have to deal with as a priority what that means is there's less money available to
12:29really address the cause this year we saw a real positive from DFT when they put in an extra half billion to that funding pot for highway maintenance across the country
12:39absolutely welcome but still a drop in the ocean
12:43many in the industry argue fixing potholes is not a long-term solution
12:49so it's hugely expensive to fix potholes if you are fixing lots of potholes your strategy has failed
12:55it's a bit like me talking to my wife and saying that we're going to keep replacing that carpet every time it rains because the roof leaks
13:02if we seal the roads very low-cost treatments we stop the water getting in and we prevent the potholes it's that simple
13:09filling in potholes should be a last resort once councils are aware of something that matches their criteria for a pothole they have a legal duty to fill them in and are under pressure to be seen to be dealing with the problem
13:27so fixing potholes has become a political issue particularly at election time
13:33what sort of things do you think should be addressed in this election
13:37potholes potholes they should be they should be number one in the whole election
13:43i have to say potholes you better get it right
13:46part of the problem is the narrative from governments over the decade and a half
13:51ministers always talk about we want to fix more potholes
13:54i heard one authority say they fixed very priory 30 000 potholes i think it was in a year and that was a sort of class to success
14:01this is a government press release with the eye-catching headline seven million more potholes to be filled
14:09when you announced that extra funding the headline was seven million potholes which is seven million steps in the wrong direction
14:16obviously we want local authorities to be able to spend on preventing that in the first place
14:22but that's they're not doing that at the moment they are literally filling in potholes so did you say that because you think that's the answer
14:27or did you say it because it looks like a good headline even though you completely must understand it's a temporary fix
14:33we're investing an extra 500 million pounds on top of the the money from the previous year
14:38and that's the equivalent of being able to fill seven million potholes
14:42i think it's important when you when you talk about sums of money you can try and translate that for something that people understand they understand potholes
14:49is our obsession with filling holes diverting money away from the preventative work which would stop them appearing in the first place
15:00protection can be applied to the surface of roads before the defects appear
15:07but preventative treatments are at their lowest level in five years
15:12back in the early 90s about nine percent of roads in england would have some form of preventative maintenance
15:17primarily surface dressing where you see chipping spread onto the road on a bitumen emulsion
15:22but that has dropped considerably it's down to about two percent
15:26how much of your budget do you use then on preventative methods
15:29over the last decade the amount of surface dressing we have done across the network has reduced by about half
15:36my own authority was able to put more funding in to top up the base grant
15:41and we're not able to do that anymore to the same extent at all
15:45why?
15:46because of the whole pressure on local government funding particularly around SEM social care etc
15:53so that means we're not able to maintain at that rate we had a few years ago
15:58i've worked in local government for over 30 years
16:01and i've never known it as hard as it is now and as tough as it is now
16:07we've spoken to a number of highway's workers
16:10one of them was prepared to be interviewed but asked to remain anonymous to protect his job
16:15so how bad is the problem do you think?
16:21i'd say it's a pretty catastrophic situation
16:26one of the public account committee's big criticisms was the money being wasted on temporary pothole repairs
16:35what's the worst you've had in terms of going back to a road a number of times?
16:40over a year i wouldn't be surprised if it's over ten times
16:44one road?
16:45yeah
16:46wow
16:47we actually say to each other
16:50oh i wonder what month we'll be back and do that one
16:52and then a few weeks or months later you will go back and do that one
16:55because they've decided to mark it up now
16:57we submitted freedom of information requests to 206 councils in England, Scotland and Wales
17:05we asked how many times a single pothole had been refilled in two years
17:11out of the 176 who responded only 16 gave us a figure
17:16the highest was 19 times in one London borough
17:22people watching our programme they're council taxpayers as you are
17:25are they getting value for money from their pothole service for the people looking after their roads?
17:31absolutely not
17:33i would say not no because they're basically paying for repairs that the council know are going to fail
17:39we've spent over a billion pounds in the last decade on filling potholes and doing temporary repairs
17:48and we know that a lot of those potholes will need to be filled again and again
17:54it's a dreadful waste of public money
18:00but these repairs aren't doing much for those whose journeys are still blighted by potholes every day
18:08we're on our way to meet Omar who's a cyclist who fell off after hitting a pothole
18:13and it was just on this road down here and it is really bad
18:17i mean it's covered in potholes
18:19even in the car you can really feel it
18:24hi Omar how are you?
18:25good how are you?
18:26i'm Richard
18:27pleased to meet you
18:28so this is where it happened
18:29it's essentially on that bit there
18:31wow i mean the road's terrible isn't it?
18:33it's not good
18:34i was cycling down from that hill over there
18:37right
18:38i hit a pothole and i went over the top over the handlebars
18:42i was knocked unconscious
18:44nine small bones in my neck were broken
18:47wow
18:48my cheekbone had to be put back into place
18:51there's a scar around my right eye
18:54i was quite lucky that i managed to keep the eye
18:57i spent five days in hospital
18:59had to have surgery
19:00so it was a long long road to recovery
19:02Omar's accident happened in Newcastle-under-Lyme in 2022
19:08when he reported the accident to Staffordshire County Council
19:11he says they told him he had to prove what had happened
19:14Omar was able to show the pothole was there before his accident
19:19by locating it on Google Street View
19:22he also had a witness
19:24these were taken a couple of weeks after
19:27ok
19:28oh wow that is deep isn't it?
19:31that is bad isn't it?
19:32it's bad
19:33i've wanted to ride since but i can't because i'm worried what's in the road
19:41you just don't go back?
19:44don't go back
19:45Staffordshire County Council says it's always sorry to hear about any accidents on its roads
19:51it says the road in question is inspected monthly
19:55and it carries out repairs on a priority basis
19:58it adds that at current funding levels it would take 181 years to repair every road in Staffordshire
20:07our anonymous highways operator says nationwide the inspection process doesn't work
20:14to me they're an absolute nightmare
20:18they make us look like fools because they'll go on a road and there could be a hundred potholes on that road
20:22and they could mark up five of them
20:24i've been out somewhere you've got one that's not that bad that you've been sent to do
20:28and then one at the other side of it that could be twice the depth
20:30councils will have officers who are driving around the county looking for safety defects
20:40most have two people one driving and one observing
20:43but you can have things like parked cars on a pothole
20:46so at the time they did the inspection they couldn't visually see it
20:49councils have something of a get out of jail free card
20:52if they aren't aware of the pothole they can't be held responsible for it
20:56but of course some councils have very large road networks so they can't be expected to have inspected all their roads
21:02so they can avoid getting into trouble and having to fill that pothole
21:08we've been told of a reason that some councils are trapped in a cycle of temporary filling potholes
21:15or ignoring them completely
21:17lots of people mention this but few were prepared to go on the record
21:21many councils use contractors to help with road maintenance including pothole repairs
21:28and some have contracts spanning many years costing millions of pounds
21:34out of the 167 councils that responded to our freedom of information question about how they carry out road maintenance work
21:4362% said they use contractors to carry out pothole repair work
21:50while 38% use solely in-house teams
21:54an industry insider who works closely with contractors has agreed to speak to us
22:00when it comes to contractors how big a part of the pothole story are they?
22:06well quite simply without fixing the contractor issue you will not fix the highways industry in the UK
22:13i've been told on countless times by contractors it's in their interest to do lots of temporary repairs
22:19they're unable to charge multiple times for multiple fixes
22:24to see the millions of millions being wasted without an effective way of fixing our roads is to be honest a national scandal
22:31i'm involved in quite a number of industry bodies and the key theme that we see is collaboration between contractors and local authorities
22:42you can always find bad in any industry but i really do see more in terms of positivity and good than i do bad
22:52there is another way of fighting potholes
22:59in 2011 blackpool council started using advanced imagery road mapping technology to understand the condition of their roads
23:09it then borrowed 30 million pounds to help repair them
23:14it shows you everything absolutely everything potholes good areas absolutely everywhere
23:21we know what the condition of the roads are where it's needed what's the priority
23:25we could see roads deteriorating and we knew that there must be a better way of dealing with that
23:32with their worse roads fixed they could adopt a preventative approach
23:37the council says it's saving them money
23:41we've gone from the usual old system of filling in holes to this early intervention
23:46do those necessary repairs that first year that works at wood under the old way of doing things
23:50would have cost us one and a half million actually cost us five hundred thousand so we saved a million pounds there
23:55and blackpool has embraced new sustainable technology for potholes
24:00rather than just filling a hole this system heats up the existing tarmac allowing it to be recycled
24:08once cooled it will last as long as the surrounding road and costs half the price of traditional methods
24:15with a traditional method with one ton of asphalt you get around about 10 square meters with this machine and a ton of material you'll get somewhere between 50 to 60 square meters of repairs
24:28gaste the company that mapped blackpool's roads has also looked at roads in england wales and scotland
24:35they believe compared to the government's data twice as many local roads are in poor condition
24:43the parliamentary public accounts committee report criticised the department for transport for not knowing how councils were spending its money
24:55to try to get a grip on things the government says to qualify for the final 25 percent of this year's 1.6 billion pound funding
25:04councils need to report on what they're doing and that includes how much they're spending on preventative work and how many potholes they've filled
25:15we are saying to councils you must now report in as to how well you've used that money how many potholes you've actually dealt with
25:22and for the first time we'll actually then be able to rate one area against another because until now we haven't had this information
25:30and i want to know that the money is being used effectively
25:34panorama has analyzed these reports and found last year local authorities in england estimated they filled in nearly 1.9 million pounds
25:44potholes
25:49but filling potholes isn't going to fix the roads in the long term
25:54and our insider in the industry says the government's push for more data will make no difference
26:02councils mark their own homework they inspect their roads they decide the quality of their own network and then they submit the data for DFT
26:11so the sentiment is there but it will have zero impact into the quality of UK roads
26:17you're saying you want to know what the councils are doing but people in the industry say it won't make a blind bit of difference
26:23we're asking for specific data from them and which we're going to create a tool for members of the public to see exactly how their council is performing
26:30but one of the metrics that you're asking the councils to provide is how many potholes they've filled
26:36which is just in the long term making our roads worse it's upside down it's getting it wrong isn't it
26:41I think we're in a situation as it stands where we are we do have a pothole plague and we do need to demonstrate to the public
26:47that we are filling those potholes but crucially that we're also got a plan we've got a strategy and we're giving them the support and the funding
26:53in order to change that from being able to count potholes into preventing that deterioration in the first place
27:00Some believe things are so bleak councils may have no alternative but to close roads
27:11How bad could it get? Could roads be closed?
27:13I think it's a place we could get to considering yes certainly
27:16But you'd abandoned some roads?
27:18I think there may be a case that sometimes some authorities may have to consider a quiet rural road
27:25do you fix that or do you fix your busy class road?
27:30I don't want us to get in that situation it's a truly shocking position to be in
27:35I'm angry about that, motorists are angry about that
27:38but I think you know we're putting our money where our mouth is
27:40we're giving councils that long term funding so we can begin to turn the tide on that
27:47Potholes make our roads hazardous and cause death and misery to hundreds of families a year
27:54But if we only prioritize temporary pothole fills the problem will be with us for a long time yet
28:24and let's get At least we over time into this though
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