Potholes and road condition issues

There are several reasons why temporary repairs are made.

• in wet or icy conditions a permanent repair wouldn't actually work - the hot bitumen would instantly cool before adequate compaction could be achieved and the ice or water would also prevent the repair bonding to the road
• permanent repairs take more time and, depending on their location, may require a road closure or temporary traffic lights to be brought in
• potholes, or a series of them, may be symptomatic of a more general, underlying problem on the stretch of road - this requires further investigation and potential resurfacing of an entire road section, and is a larger job and so can't be done immediately

If the reported pothole does need attention but does not pose an immediate hazard to the road user, it may be more cost effective to plan longer lasting repair work. We may be planning further works in the area and the pothole in question will be fixed as part of an overall programme of work. This is done to maximise the long term benefit for the money that we have.

This would then be prioritised according to how busy the road is and how much impact the work would have. We check the state of current known defects during monthly safety inspections of main roads to ensure that they have not worsened to the point where they now pose a hazard to road users. These safety inspections are carried out less frequently on low traffic roads where further erosion is likely to be slower due to the reduced traffic volumes.

You can find out more about how we decide what type of road repair treatment to use here.

Funds from vehicle excise duty and fuel don't come directly to us, they go to central government. Each year, we receive an allocation of funds from central government which we must decide how to use.

We have faced some challenges such as government cuts, severe winters and a backlog of road maintenance that have delayed improving road conditions.

Whilst the required cuts are significant we should not lose sight of the fact that for the next four years we still expect to have between £54million and £57million available each year to deliver the highways service. Although the network we manage is vast (over 5,800 miles of roads, 2,600 miles of footways and 2,000 bridges) we still aim to deliver a high quality service. This covers all repair and improvement work, not just the repair of potholes.

If you wish to report a pothole or other highway fault, we encourage you to do so via our online reporting system. Reports made on our website are cheaper for the council to process and give you a speedier resolution where we are able to repair the fault, as they are immediately logged on to our system.

Reports received from third party sites can take up more staff time and do not always provide all the information we require. As we receive hundreds of emails it can take time to get to your report and log it in our system.