Councils need £14bn and 11 years to fix ‘international embarrassment’ of England’s pothole pandemic

More than £14 billion is now needed to tackle the road repair backlog in England and Wales, according to a new report.

As experts warn of a “pothole plague”, new figures show that the cost of simply bringing local roads up to target standards has jumped by 11% in the last year while the gap between actual funding and what is needed has grown even further.

Data from the Asphalt Industry Alliance’s (AIA) annual Alarm suvey shows that the gap between what local authorities received and what they said they would have needed to keep roads to their own target conditions is now £1.3bn - a 20% jump over the previous year. It also shows that it would take 11 years just to bring roads in England and Wales up to a standard where they won’t keep deteriorating.

Motoring groups called the situation an “international embarrassment” and urged the government to provide major investment for a long-term solution rather than simply patching existing problems.