All English local authorities will receive 75% of the additional funding, but the remaining 25% will be withheld if a council does not publish a report on road maintenance, including details on pothole filling progress
The government has announced plans to rank local councils based on their progress in fixing potholes. Starting mid-April, the Department for Transport (DfT) will provide an additional £500 million to councils’ road maintenance budgets. However, councils that fail to publish annual reports detailing their pothole repair progress will lose a quarter of this additional funding.
Prime Minister Starmer emphasised the importance of transparency, stating that a rating system will be implemented to identify which councils are performing well and which are not. The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents councils, has argued that the government should prioritise preventative measures rather than reactive pothole repairs. According to the LGA, addressing the country’s backlog of road repairs would take over a decade and cost nearly £17 billion, citing a survey from the Asphalt Industry Alliance.
Data from the RAC indicates that there are six potholes for every mile of road in England and Wales. All English local authorities will receive 75% of the additional funding, but the remaining 25% will be withheld if a council does not publish a report on road maintenance, including details on pothole filling progress. The withheld funds will be redirected to councils that the DfT believes have made significant progress. This policy will only apply to English councils, as funding for Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish local authorities is devolved.
Prime Minister Starmer introduced a RAG (red, amber, green) rating system for councils’ pothole maintenance efforts. He highlighted the need for transparency, noting that until now, there has been no clear information on the number of potholes being filled and their locations. The RAG system aims to eliminate the current “lottery” of road conditions.
However, Lucy Nethsingha, leader of Cambridgeshire County Council and chair of the LGA’s Liberal Democrat group, criticised the funding amount as insufficient. She argued that the government’s approach was unhelpful and that the announcement did not provide new funding. She pointed out that fixing the roads in Cambridgeshire alone would require an additional £410 million, while the government’s total allocation for England was £500 million.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander acknowledged that the available funds would not fix every pothole but emphasised the importance of councils being transparent about their spending. She expected most local authorities to comply with the new requirements. By the end of October, councils must also demonstrate that they have consulted with communities on where repairs should take place.
The LGA stressed the need for long-term funding certainty to focus on cost-effective preventative measures rather than reactive repairs. Shadow transport secretary Gareth Bacon described the government’s announcement as a “pothole sticking plaster,” while Liberal Democrats transport spokesman Paul Kohler called for a more sustainable approach to address the crumbling road infrastructure.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she was “not pretending that the money we’re making available will fill every pothole”. Asked whether withholding cash from some councils would just make things worse for drivers in some areas, she said she expected most local authorities would be able to “comply with these requirements”.
“We want councils to be open and honest about how they are using that money so that the public can go onto their local council’s website and see what action is being taken,” she said. Under the government’s rules, councils must say how much they are spending, how many potholes have been filled and detail long-term road maintenance plans in reports that have to be published by the end of June.
By the end of October, councils must also demonstrate that communities have been consulted on where repairs should take place. The DfT added that councils who “fail to meet these strict conditions” will see 25% of the funding withheld. During the election campaign, Labour pledged to repair up to a million potholes a year in England.
The LGA said it was in “everyone’s interests to ensure that public money is well spent”. “This includes the government playing its full part by using the Spending Review to ensure that councils receive sufficient, long-term funding certainty, so they can focus their efforts on much more cost-effective, preventative measures rather than reactively fixing potholes, which is more expensive,” it added.
