Autumn statement 2015: Osborne declares war on potholes with new £1bn pledge. How many potholes are there in your area?
George Osborne has launched a bid to rid Britain's roads of potholes, with a promise to spend £1bn more on the scourge over the course of this parliament.
The UK has 18m potholes on its roads, according to the Department for Transport (DfT), already enough to warrant a fund of £4.7bn, to be spent between now and 2021. Now a further £1bn will likely be added to the fund.
The DfT announced last December which councils will receive funds in an attempt to smooth out the nation's roads. The £4.7bn is split up between 115 different councils and, using some rudimentary mathematics, we can work out a rough estimate of the number of potholes each area has to contend with.
Splitting the total (£4.7bn) by the number of holes (18m) we get a rough price of £261. That seems a bit steep, though. A look at a West Sussex Council page on potholes reveals that the cost of fixing one pothole ranges from £50 – £75, although figures vary by area.
This price, however, “does not include traffic management costs which can increase the price significantly" – and it is fair to assume not all holes will be plugged. Osborne's extra £1bn should help to fix an extra 1.3m imperfections.
We’ll work from the assumption that, with traffic costs included, the price is £75 a pothole. If that’s the case, that means the DfT foresaw the need to repair 62m potholes between now and 2021.
Use our calculator to work out how many potholes are in your areas roads and how much money has been allocated to repair them.
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Here are the counties with the most implied potholes, based on their total funding between now and 2021:
Devon tops the list with 2.9m holes in its roads. Its page on the issue is pretty brief:
We aim to repair large potholes on major roads, well-used pavements and cycle ways within one working day. Potholes on minor routes are targeted for repair within seven working days.
Potholes continue to be a huge problem in the UK, with counties paying out vast sums of money in compensation to vehicles damaged as a result of accidents. According to Autoglass, councils in England and Wales paid out £22.8m in compensation in 2012 alone. What's more, on a metre-for-metre basis, it is 20 times more expensive to repair a pothole than to resurface a road.