January 15th was National Pothole Day (NPD), an annual celebration (if that’s the appropriate word) of the progress being made in filling them. It’s organised by the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA).
According to the AIA, whilst centrally, over £1bn has been spent on finding and filling potholes over the past decade, cuts in local authority budgets means that pothole fillers are running pretty hard without getting very far. Ever increasing traffic volumes isn’t helping their cause.
Indeed, data released by the RAC to coincide with NPD, shows their patrols attended 20% more pothole breakdowns in Q4 of 2019 compared to the same period last year.
AIA chair, Rick Green said: “It’s promising that the new Government has recognised the need to ramp up spending on infrastructure in general, but this must include properly funding the maintenance of existing transport networks, such as our vital local roads, just as much as on headline-grabbing new schemes.
“We’ve been calling for £1.5bn extra per year for the next 10 years to bring local road conditions up to a level from which they can be maintained cost effectively going forward. This investment would be a really sensible allocation of part of the £100bn five-year pot being pledged by Government and it would be really remiss if local roads, on which we all depend, were left out.”