Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander's car struck a pothole and had to be towed away. The incident occurred while she was driving home from her Swindon South constituency on the B4437 outside Burford in Oxfordshire. New rules announced on Tuesday propose that local councils could lose up to a third of their funding if they neglect to fix potholes.
6 billion budgets for the following year if they fail to address potholes. Councils will be ordered to publish reports proving they are spending their allotted highway budgets on patching up roads and long-term maintenance plans. The Government has introduced a traffic light grading system for local highway authorities to assess road conditions, with red-rated authorities receiving more cash.
I joked to my husband that I thought that the astronauts on Artemis II might have seen a similar-size crater when they were slingshotting around the Moon last week.
Labour will provide £300,000 worth of expert support to the 13 red-rated areas to help fix roads. 3 billion to repairing the UK's roads, with funding delivered to local councils over four years. Pothole damage costs the average driver around £500 in repairs, with insurance claims soaring recently.
Tesco Insurance settled 12% more pothole damage claims in January 2026 than in the entire second half of 2025. 6 billion. Motorists have been increasingly attacking workmen trying to fix roads, with workers being sworn at, spat at, and punched.
I expect local councils . . . will start to feel the wrath of their own public if they're not seeing progress.
Richard Holden, shadow transport secretary, blamed the Government and said Labour councils have been failing drivers for years.