Whether its on a quiet country road or a busy motorway, it seems almost impossible to drive anywhere in Britain without hitting a pothole.
While you might curse the council for not filling in the hole that just smashed your suspension, the source of Britain’s pothole scourge isn’t quite so simple.
In fact, by the time a pothole starts to appear, the best time to act has long since passed.
And for a country with roads already as cratered and pitted as Britain, that is turning into a major problem.
In reality, experts say Britain’s pothole crisis is the result of a ‘whack–a–mole’ approach to filling in potholes and not enough focus on preventing them from forming.
There are dozens of modern preventative treatments available that can extend the lifetime of Britain’s failing roads by decades – including surface dressing, preservative sprays, and rejuvenation treatments.
But the vast majority of UK councils are still neglecting these extremely cost–effective measures.
So, no matter how many potholes are filled in, some UK roads are only going to keep getting worse.
Experts say that simply filling in potholes isn’t going to solve the dire state of Britain’s roads. Instead, councils need to invest more in preventing the holes from forming in the first place
Why filling in potholes isn’t the way to fix Britain’s roads
Along with talking about the weather, complaining about potholes is something of a British obsession.
Potholes consistently rank as drivers’ biggest concerns, even overtaking the cost of insurance in a recent RAC survey, and it’s easy to understand why.
This year, between June and April alone, the RAC responded to 6,575 incidents of pothole–related damage, including damaged shock absorbers, broken suspension springs and distorted wheels.
This means that the public puts a huge amount of pressure on councils to dedicate more and more resources to patching up the holes in their roads.
In 2024, the government awarded councils £1.6 billion in extra funding to fill in an estimated seven million extra potholes.
However, experts say that this ‘whack–a–mole’ approach to road maintenance is actually leaving Britain’s roads in a worse state.
Simon Williams, head of policy at the RAC, told Daily Mail: ‘Councils then kind of get obsessed with trying to fill potholes, because they’re dangerous, and they need to be filled.
Roads have a limited lifespan, usually between 10 to 15 years. By the time that potholes have started to emerge, it is a sign that the road has already started to deteriorate and filling them in does not address the core problem
‘But then, if you don’t go and treat that road surface afterwards, the pothole’s going to reappear.’
The problem is that any road surface, no matter how well made, only has an expected lifetime of 10 to 15 years before problems start to emerge.
Exposure to oxygen and UV radiation makes the bitumen in the tarmac brittle and likely to crack, while water and ice gradually pull the surface apart.
‘Once a pothole occurs, it’s really a sign that that road is starting to fail,’ says Ms Williams.
Filling in one pothole solves the immediate problem, but if the road itself is already failing, more cracks are only going to reappear next winter.
Instead, experts say that councils need to dedicate far more effort to extending their roads’ lifetimes so that cracks never form in the first place.
How can you extend a road’s lifetime?
There are four main ways to extend a road’s expected lifetime: rejuvenation, preservation, surface dressing, and micro resurfacing.
One of the best methods to keep a road pothole–free is to treat it with a preventative method, such as surface dressing (pictured)
Rejuvenation and preservative treatments are the first line of defence against potholes that councils have at their disposal.
Nick Thom, assistant professor of engineering at the University of Nottingham, told Daily Mail: ‘Rejuvenation treatments are where you spray an oily substance onto the surface to soften up the bitumen.’
That might sound like a bad thing to do, but by taking away some of the brittleness that has developed over time, engineers can ‘reset the clock’ on the road – making it as good as new.
Following that, councils can also use a preservative treatment, which is sprayed over the surface to create a tough skin that prevents water from penetrating and forming cracks.
For roads with more serious problems, the next preservative option available is surface dressing.
This is a really common form of road maintenance in which a thin layer of bitumen and stones is sprayed onto the surface and rolled into place.
Finally, many councils are now beginning to adopt an innovative new form of treatment called micro asphalt.
Micro asphalt is essentially a slurry containing cement, additives, fibres and bitumen emulsion.
During surface dressing, a thin layer of bitumen and stones is rolled over the existing road (pictured). This prevents new cracks from forming and is much cheaper than resurfacing the road
Unlike normal asphalt, which must be applied hot, Mr Thom explains that these treatments work just like the paint you might use in your house.
‘The emulsion is little drops of paint within the water, but when you put it on the wall, they all coalesce,’ Mr Thom explains.
‘You can do the same thing with bitumen and get something that you can just paint onto the road.’
Why is road maintenance so important?
Alan Casson, Strategic Asset Manager for the highway management team at Kent County Council, told Daily Mail that roads deteriorate in a curve.
Mr Casson says: ‘Not a lot happens for the first five years.’
However, once roads start to deteriorate, they break apart faster and faster until they spiral out of control towards the end of their lifespan.
‘If we go to the start of the curve, in the first three to five years, we can apply that treatment and it will reset the curve,’ Mr Casson explained.
Even cheaper approaches than surface dressing are available. Rejuvenation techniques, for example, reduce the brittleness of the bitumen in the road and ‘reset the clock’ on its decay
By applying a preservative treatment once every five years, councils can extend the lifespan of their roads by decades and stop them reaching the point where potholes might form.
Not only is this better for drivers, but it is also a significantly more cost–effective use of taxpayers’ money.
Resurfacing a road that has become damaged by potholes costs £20–£40 per square metre for a surface that will need replacing in 10 to 15 years if not treated.
Spraying that same road with a preservation or rejuvenation treatment costs just £4 per square metre once every five to six years.
Even repairing extensive damage with micro asphalt costs just £8–£10 per square metre and only needs to be done once every 10 to 12 years.
Mike Hansford, director of the Road Surface Treatments Association (RSTA), told Daily Mail that looking after the roads should be like ‘servicing your car’.
He says: ‘The government have invested billions in constructing and resurfacing roads, so it would make sense to invest small amounts in keeping those assets in optimum condition.’
The UK’s pothole postcode lottery
While preventative road maintenance is extremely cost–effective, many councils have been resistant to investing more in this method due to a focus on filling in potholes
Around the country, there are some striking examples of just how effective this approach to road maintenance can be.
Since 2007, the entire length of the M40 has been treated twice using a preservative called Rhinophalt.
Since then, the motorway has been consistently voted as the best road in the UK by industry experts and has required very little major maintenance.
But drivers in the rest of the UK aren’t quite so lucky.
Mr Hansford says: ‘Some councils report difficulties in getting senior decision makers to adopt this strategy, because they are so fixated on fixing potholes and resurfacing end–of–life roads.’
According to the RSTA’s data, the use of road surface treatments has actually plummeted from 90 million square metres in 2008 to just 35 million square metres in 2023.
‘I think this is one of the biggest contributory factors to why we have so many potholes,’ says Mr Hansford.
To make matters worse, what little investment is being made in road maintenance is not evenly distributed around the country.
According to the RAC, between 2023 and 2024, only three per cent of the road network received any form of preventative maintenance, 2,616 miles fewer than the previous year.
However, more than half of all UK councils carried out no form of maintenance on A roads, while a third made no preservative efforts on minor roads.
Some councils, such as Bexley, Tameside, and Blackpool, carried out no preventative maintenance whatsoever on either minor or major roads.
That doesn’t mean that the councils didn’t make any repairs, for example, Blackpool council undertook reconstruction on 2.3 miles of major roads and 12.57 miles of minor roads.
But it does mean that these areas are not taking any of the hugely cost–effective steps that avoid the need for major reconstruction projects in the first place.
That has a huge impact on the quality of the roads, with Blackpool averaging a massive 13.4 potholes per mile.
On the other hand, there are several areas of the UK where massive progress is being made.
The RAC data shows that councils that did carry out preservation work treated 23 per cent more miles of roads than the previous year.
In Norfolk, over five miles of the A1066 were treated with a rejuvenation product in just five hours (pictured). Avoiding the need to close the road for 11 weeks to resurface it at a cost of £3.7 million
For example, Kent County Council spends £10 million each year on preservative and rejuvenation treatments and a further £3–4 million on surface dressing and micro–asphalt.
Mr Casson explains: ‘It’s just a really good use of taxpayers’ money because the alternative is waiting for the road to fail. The best thing that any higher authority can do is to invest in preservation.’
Likewise, in Norfolk, where there are just 1.3 potholes per mile, the local authority is investing heavily in road preservation.
In 2025, the council plans to spend £12 million treating 320 miles of the council’s 6,200 miles of roads, up from 280 miles last year.
In August, Norfolk County Council set the record for the fastest treatment project when it rejuvenated five miles of the A1066 in just five hours – opening the road again in time for the evening rush hour.
The alternative was to wait for the road to fail and resurface it at a cost of £3.7 million, causing 11 weeks of closures.
However, while these examples show how efficient the preventative approach can be, there are still vanishingly few places where it is being put into practice.
And with cash for new projects in short supply for many areas, it appears that the rest of the country will be left grappling with an endless wave of potholes for many years to come.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .