Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander was driving home from her Swindon South constituency when her car struck a pothole on the B4437 outside Burford in Oxfordshire, resulting in the vehicle being towed away. Alexander said her own unfortunate experience with a pothole had made her more determined to fix the endemic problem on Britain's roads. 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 the state of their roads.
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.
Red-rated authorities in the traffic light system receive more cash to deliver smoother roads, and Labour will furnish the 13 red-rated areas with £300,000 worth of expert support to help councils fix roads. 3 billion to repairing the UK's roads, with funding delivered to local councils over a four-year period. Pothole damage costs the average driver around £500 in repairs, and the number of insurance claims to fix vehicles from pothole damage has soared in recent months.
Tesco Insurance settled 12 percent more pothole damage claims in January 2026 than in the entire second half of 2025. 6 billion as of last month. Britain has a record £19 billion pothole backlog.
I expect local councils . . . will start to feel the wrath of their own public if they're not seeing progress.
Potholes are costing drivers millions in repair bills and even threatening the delivery of urgent medical supplies such as overnight blood donations. Motorists have been increasingly attacking workmen trying to fix roads, with workers being sworn at, spat at, and even punched. Richard Holden, shadow transport secretary, placed the blame at the Government's feet and said Labour councils had been failing drivers for years.
The Daily Mail has been campaigning for an end to the scourge of potholes.
Ten of the sixteen worst-performing councils