Revealed: How 33M extra potholes a year could be fixed if councils used a better approach
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- Citroen warns councils risk wasting £1.23bn repair funds due to lack of cohesion
Seventeen times more potholes could have been repaired last year if councils used a standardised approach to filling in craters in our local roads, new research has said.
A study identified a massive £650 difference in the amount local authorities are spending per planned pothole repair, suggesting millions is being wasted due to inconsistent strategies and repair techniques.
A Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted by Citroen to 284 councils across England, Scotland and Wales suggests that if all councils paid the lowest amount recorded for a single planned pothole fix, there could have been 33.3 million fewer craters on routes.
The report found that, because councils had significantly different processes, and therefore costs, for reactive and planned pothole repairs, just 1.89 million were filled throughout 2024.
French car maker Citroen - which has long campaigned for an improved approach to pothole repairs in the UK - is warning that councils are at risk of wasting a staggering £1.23 billion by overspending on road maintenance.
This is not the first time polarised approaches councils are taking to pothole repairs have been laid bare. Last year, This is Money reported how a joint RAC and Channel 4 Dispatches investigation exposed the varying criteria required for councils to send out road fixing teams.
Citroen’s discovery follows the 2025 Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) report, which in March revealed that 52 per cent of roads have less than 15 years’ structural life remaining.
The one-off cost to fix this approaching crisis and bring the road network up to the ‘ideal’ condition is claimed to have increased to a cool £16.81 billion.
The ALARM report also looked into the average cost for a reactive and planned pothole repair and found it was £72.37.
However, while this might be the average, the disparity in potholes repair costs each council is coughing up varies massively from over £500 to the price of a supermarket meal deal, according to the results of Citroen's FOI.
Out of the 284 councils Citroen approached, 145 responded - and just 61 had comparable data, with authorities not even having a standardised approach to how it records these figures.
The FOI showed Shetland Islands Council spent the most, forking out an eye watering £656 per single planned pothole repair in 2024.
Shropshire Council and Coventry City Council spent £654 and £633.90 respectively per crater filled.
In comparison, Cardiff Council spent just £4.13 on a single planned pothole fix in the same time period, highlighting a significant imbalance between local authorities.
If all of the 1.89 million potholes filled in last year were repaired at the rate of the most expensive council repair (£656), the cost would be £1.2 billion, while using Cardiff's £4.13-a-pothole approach would see that bill plummet to only £7.8 million across the country.
On top of this, if Cardiff’s approach was the standardised methodology then the Shetland Islands Council could have filled in nine times more potholes in 2024.
The discrepancy in how councils assess and repair potholes
Last year, the RAC and Channel 4's Dispatches found that whether potholes do or don't get fixed depends entirely on each council's own criteria.
And as with repair costs of a pothole, there is not a standard definition of what depth constitutes a pothole, and therefore whether it's in need of being repaired.
The probe found that a third of councils will only fix potholes when they reach a specific depth, irrelevant of how wide they are.
Incredibly, three-in-10 councils don't state any public criteria for repairing potholes.
Accordingly, the 2025 ALARM Report suggested that around three-quarters of surveyed councils use a guideline depth of 40mm to define a pothole.
Dispatches also found that the most common depth for pothole repair is 4cm (54 councils), but only 35 per cent (out of 206 councils surveyed) will act on potholes if they meet this barometer.
But some councils - Warwickshire, Torbay, Thurrock, Nottingham, Torfaen and South Lanarkshire - won't fix potholes unless they're at least 5cm deep.
The RAC's main concern was that the use of specific size-based criteria could 'kick the can down the road' and avoid pothole repairs, exacerbating the UK's pothole crisis.
In the wake of the discovery it called on 'Whitehall to provide fresh guidance to councils to bring about consistency when it comes to prioritising potholes and taking action to fix them.'
Citroen is also calling for a standardised approach to repairs, because without it the Government risks wasting recently announced £1.6 billion investment into pothole maintenance - the additional amount the UK Government has committed to giving British councils for pothole repairs.
If all councils spent £4.13 per single planned pothole repair, like Cardiff Council, the government’s £1.6 billion investment could fund 387 million potholes based on the 2024 figures.
This is compared to only an additional 2.4 million more potholes being filled if all councils spent £656 per pothole repair, the most expensive rate for a single planned pothole repair.
Greg Taylor, Managing Director Citroen UK, said: 'Road conditions in Great Britain continue to deteriorate year-on-year and our data highlights the issues around pothole repairs, in particular the considerable overspending on planned and reactive pothole repairs because of a non-standardised approach to maintenance.
'We are glad that the government has committed to give councils an additional £1.6 billion to repair potholes, but without a standardised approach this money is at risk of being wasted.'
