Council hoping for more funding to continue its war on potholes

Having fixed 3,882 potholes across the Borough between April and September 2024, Swindon Borough Council is calling for further investment into local roads as part of the Autumn Budget due to be delivered by the Chancellor on 30 October.

Extra resources would support the hard work of the Council’s highways teams, including in identifying defects and carrying out proactive resurfacing work.

In Swindon, it is estimated it would cost £142m to get all roads to a ‘like new’ condition.

However, the Council’s limited resources mean in 2024/25 it will spend £2m on proactive road resurfacing work, £170,000 on reactive pothole repairs and £715,000 on patching repairs to larger sections of road.

Around 70 per cent of the potholes fixed by the Council are reported by its team of highway inspectors who visit all 522 miles of Swindon’s roads and all 646 miles of paths/pavements and 76 miles of cycle paths at least once a year.

They assess potholes reported by the public, around 30 per cent of which do not meet the standard investigation criteria use to be classed as a pothole. A pothole is safety defect that is at least 30mm deep in the road surface (roughly the height of two 20p coins).

As well as identifying potholes, the team also manage reports of flooding and damaged signage.

Marcia Belcher is part of the team of highways inspectors. She says that the most important thing residents can do is report issues they find:

“We rely on residents actively sharing reports of problems they spot with us,” Marcia explained.

“We’ll risk assess any reports we get and ask our colleagues to carry out repairs to the most serious defects as soon as possible. While we cover all the roads across the Borough, it wouldn’t be possible to do our work without the support of local people.”

In July 2024, the National Audit Office published a report on ‘The condition and maintenance of local roads in England’ which made a number of recommendations to the government including ensuring available funding is allocated as effectively as possible.

Councillor Chris Watts, Cabinet Member for the Environment and Transport, said: "We know from our annual resident survey that residents repeatedly see road maintenance as a top priority for the Council. Our hard-working teams continue to use the limited budget we have available to monitor, repair and prevent potholes.

“But the RAC and other organisations recognise that councils simply haven’t had the financial support they need to bring the standard of the roads in their care up to a reasonable standard.

“This lack of investment dates back well over a decade and is not something the Government can fix overnight given the ongoing pressure on public finances. But any further money the Chancellor is able to make available for the local roads network would be welcome.”

Residents can report a pothole online by typing ‘potholes’ into the search box of the Council’s website and using the online map facility.