January 15th, 2026.



The cross-transport sector Pothole Partnership is using today's National Pothole Day to call on local authorities and their contractors to put an end to the policy of short-term temporary fixes to potholes that have to be repaired again within months or even weeks.

The Partnership has welcomed the government’s announcement this week that it is introducing a traffic light rating system to allow ratepayers to see how well their local council is tackling the pothole plague but wants to see a radical new approach.

It believes a five-year warranty would be a game-changer for all road users ensuring the pothole fixes stay fixed and are not just patched and re-patched. It says this would reduce costly vehicle damage for car owners as well as reduce potentially life-threatening injuries to motorcyclists and cyclists.

Successive governments have pumped billions of pounds into speeding up pothole repairs but with the latest AA data (released today) revealing they were called out to 613,638 pothole related incidents in 2025 – that’s an average of 1,681 every day – the Pothole Partnership says a radical new approach is needed.

The Partnership, which is supported by the British Motorcyclists Federation and road safety organisations TyreSafe and IAM RoadSmart welcomed the slight drop in the number of AA pothole-related call outs compared to the previous year.

The five-year warranty proposals, which the Partnership has sent to the Department of Transport, would mean whoever fixes a non-emergency pothole repair or small patching repair – be that local authorities or their contractors or sub-contractors – would issue a warranty for that repair for 5 years. Then if a pothole reappears within five years, it would be repaired for free under the warranty.

The Partnership has sent FOI requests to local councils to establish how many potholes are repaired more than once and whether repairs come with guarantees. One council in the south of England said it carried out over 31,000 pothole repairs in a year but that more than 2,200 of those locations needed repeat repairs in that period. It also confirmed pothole repairs currently carry a one-year workmanship guarantee from contractors, meaning the cost of any repeat repairs needed after 12 months falls on local ratepayers.

The Pothole Partnership was formed two years ago and has consistently warned that much of the recently announced additional government funding to local authorities for pothole repairs is still being wasted on short-term fixes, with too many locations re-visited within 12 months.

It is urging local authorities to spend the money ‘more wisely’ by switching from expensive, labour-intensive ‘patch and run’ temporary manual repairs to permanent automated solutions – such as the JCB Pothole Pro - that can be done four times faster than manual repairs, and for half the cost.

NMC Executive Director, Craig Carey-Clinch said: “While the NMC very much welcomes progress made by the Government on this issue since the Pothole Partnership engaged constrictively with the DfT, feedback to the NMC’s members from motorcycle riders reveals there remains a real need to move pothole repair standards to the next level and require that repairs are guaranteed for five years.

“We are still seeing too much ‘patch and dash’ repair work going on, which when these fail is not only extremely hazardous for motorcyclists and cyclists, but leave a legacy of additional gravel and debris from the failed repair on the highway – a further hazard for riders. We urge Ministers to adopt the Partnership proposals, so we can finally see robust long-term repairs become the norm rather than the exception, so finally getting on top of the UK’s pothole problem.”

The Partnership is also calling for clarity on the way local authorities measure and repair potholes. A 2024 FOI request revealed that local authorities have 78 different ways of measuring the effectiveness of their pothole repairs. One council even admitted that it doesn’t bother measuring the longevity of their repairs, underlining the wide chasm between the best and the worst local authorities.