Political Posturing on Potholes is Full of Holes

I wrote this post back in 2023 and not much has changed since.

As we approach another County Council election (probably the last), the Conservatives are declaring a “pothole emergency” presumably reflecting the climate emergency declarations of a few years ago. But it didn’t seem to be that much of an emergency in 2019 when they were in control of the County Council. Back then they were even worse and had been getting that way for decades.

The truth is that no council, regardless of political control, ever receives enough funding to fix the roads properly. The reason is that it would cost BILLIONS to do it really well and no government has ever committed to that. Our roads have been allowed to get worse year on year because no government wants to commit to the costs of fixing them properly. Why would they when local councils can take the brunt of the criticisms for them?

No council wants to see potholes. They are a very visible problem that nearly everyone experiences and every councillor and council officer would like to see gone. Of course we’d all like to have the unlimited funding that would be required to fix them, but it’s just not there at the moment. That, coupled with fact that we’re all driving much heavier vehicles than the roads were designed for (plus the increase in HGV traffic) means our roads take a hammering 24 hours a day. Add in the weather extremes we see now and it’s little wonder they break up.

But it’s not a recent problem. The Tories may say they will fix it, but they didn’t seem to be able to do so in 2019 when Oxfordshire was ranked 5th worse in the country for the number of potholes as can be seen from the attached article in my post from 2023.

So let’s get serious about this issue and stop using it as the proverbial political football every time an election rolls around. Potholes are always going to be with us until central government takes proper responsibility for maintaining our road network, rather than insisting on us building even more roads that we won’t be given the money to maintain. The more roads we build, the bigger and more costly the problem will get. Until governments make that connection, there’s not going to be a long-term solution.

We all also need to take personal responsibility for the way our roads are treated. High torque acceleration from traffic lights, on corners or near traffic calming areas such as speed humps will simply tear the road surface up. Our roads are not indestructible, certainly not when we’re all driving heavier cars with 4 wheel drive or more and more of us are buying things online that need to be delivered by heavier vans and trucks. Climate change also plays a part as heavier rainfall and sudden cold snaps play havoc with road surfaces.

Yes our roads need to be properly attended to, but until there’s a national political consensus on that, along with an ongoing commitment to proper funding from national governments, potholes will always be with us to a lesser or greater degree, and any political party that tells you different is just avoiding the holes in their own arguments.

I’ve done my best to get potholes fixed in my division over the past 4 years but it is like playing a game of of whack-a-mole. You get one fixed and another 2 pop up somewhere else. Whilst I agree there needs to be better quality control on the standard of repairs, simply filling the holes will never solve the problem as any hole is always going to be a point of weakness in the future. In reality there are many roads in the county that need to be completely re-laid, but if the money is spent on that, it’s not there to fix areas elsewhere.

It’s a juggling act that will be made better over the next 2 years as OCC have committed nearly £39m to a 2 year road improvement programme. That will help matters (and they have been getting better over the past 4 years despite what the Tories might say in their leaflets), But that sort of funding is still small beer compared to what we need to spend, and that need is getting bigger every year.

What I think is really needed is a pothole summit where councils, residents, motoring organisations, haulage and delivery companies, civil engineers and of course, national government can come together to work on a solution. All the time we simply blame each other every time there’s an election, there’s never going to be the long term solution that we desperately need.