The scale is difficult to overstate. In the 12 months to September 2025, potholes caused 25,758 RAC callouts — an 11 per cent increase on the previous year, and 35 per cent above pre-pandemic levels. The AA calculated the total cost of pothole damage to UK vehicles in 2025 at £645 million, the highest annual figure on record. The average repair bill for anything worse than a puncture runs to £590 according to RAC data. Across the last four years, 3.4 million potholes were reported by British motorists, with around 600,000 reported in 2025 alone. Councils repaired 990,840 potholes last year and paid out on 114,230 compensation claims totalling around £11 million. The average payout was £242 — £67 more than the average garage bill for the damage.
England and Wales currently average six potholes per mile on council-controlled roads. More than one million are thought to be active on the network at any given time. The RAC's February 2026 figures represent more than triple the 1,842 callouts recorded in the same month a year earlier, driven by England receiving 42 per cent more rainfall than average over the winter months. Parts of Cornwall, Leicestershire and the West Midlands recorded the wettest winter since records began in 1836. Cold wet weather is the optimal pothole-forming environment: water infiltrates existing surface cracks, freezes and expands, then thaws to leave cavities that traffic then breaks open from above.
The government's own traffic light ratings system, introduced alongside the £7.3 billion roads funding commitment in the Autumn 2025 Budget, reveals the state of the network starkly. Fewer than one in five English councils are rated green for road conditions. The majority are amber. Seven per cent are in the worst red category. West Northamptonshire has the poorest road surfaces in England. Stoke-on-Trent has the longest average time to fix individual potholes at 657 days, followed by Westminster at 556 days and Norfolk at 482 days. At the other end, Essex County Council has the largest road repair budget in the UK for 2025/26 at £72 million. Carmarthenshire has the smallest at £510,000.
Despite the £7.3 billion pledge and the £1.6 billion already in circulation for 2025/26, the government's own report acknowledged that the Pothole Fund is not additional money but a reallocation of reduced capital funding overall. Drivers know this. In the Great British Pothole Poll 2026, 58 per cent of drivers said road quality had worsened in the past year. Eight in ten said councils were not fixing potholes in a timely manner. Seven in ten said repairs were failing within days or weeks of being completed. More than 17 per cent said swerving to avoid potholes created a dangerous situation on every single journey they took.
The brightest light at the end of the tunnel, notes RAC head of policy Simon Williams, is still "a frustratingly long way off."
Which areas are worst affected?
Greater London, West Yorkshire and Devon ranked among the top locations for council-reported pothole repairs in 2025. Brighton is among the most consistently complained about areas, with East Sussex Highways recording over 3,700 pothole reports in January 2026 alone, up from roughly 2,310 in January 2025. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland operate on separate funding arrangements: Scotland's First Minister John Swinney insisted in 2024 that councils were adequately funded, while Northern Ireland's Infrastructure Minister set aside £8.1 million in additional funding to fix the worst roads.
Which cars suffer most?
The single model generating the highest number of alloy wheel damage claims in 2025 was the Tesla Model S, according to Intelligent Motoring's research. German premium brands feature heavily in damage claims data: models from BMW, Audi and Mercedes with 19 to 22 inch wheels and low-profile tyres are disproportionately represented. The physics is straightforward.
Duncan McClure Fisher, chief executive of Intelligent Motoring, explained the combination directly.
"Many EVs and premium vehicles are fitted with larger wheels and lower-profile tyres, which provide less cushioning against potholes. That combination of heavier vehicles, bigger wheels and poorer road surfaces is driving up both the frequency and cost of damage. This is not good news for people approaching the end of a lease contract, where financial penalties can apply for damage."
In the old days a deep tyre sidewall absorbed the shock of a road impact. Modern low-profile tyres leave the force nowhere to go except through the wheel. A wider, smaller-diameter wheel on steel suspension components offers considerably more protection than a 21 inch alloy on run-flat rubber. The practical implication for drivers who regularly use poorly maintained roads is that downsizing wheels and fitting higher-profile tyres can meaningfully reduce pothole damage costs, where a manufacturer's wheel size range allows it.
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How to make a claim
This is the part most drivers either do not know about or give up on too quickly. Councils have a legal duty of care to maintain their roads. If a pothole caused damage to your vehicle and the council was aware of it, or should reasonably have been aware of it, you may be entitled to compensation directly from the authority. The process is worth understanding before you simply absorb the cost.
The council's standard defence is called the Section 58 defence, which states it is not liable if it had a reasonable system of road inspection and repair in place. That defence fails if you can demonstrate the pothole had been reported previously and was not repaired within a reasonable timeframe. Evidence is everything.
Step one: photograph the pothole immediately, if it is safe to do so. Include something for scale — a shoe, a bottle, a wheel in frame. Photograph your vehicle damage. Note the exact location, road name, date and time.
Step two: report the pothole to the relevant council via the Gov.uk report tool at gov.uk/report-pothole. This creates a timestamped official record. If the pothole had been reported before your incident, that prior report becomes evidence in your claim.
Step three: get at least two written repair quotes from garages. The council will want documentary evidence of the actual cost.
Step four: submit a formal claim in writing to the council's highways department. Include photographs, your repair quotes, evidence of prior reporting if available, and a clear description of where and when the damage occurred. Keep copies of everything.
If your claim is rejected, you can escalate to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman for England. For Scotland, the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. For Wales, the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales.
Separately, if the damage occurred on a motorway or A-road, the responsible body is National Highways, not your local council. Submitting a claim to the wrong authority will result in rejection on procedural grounds regardless of the merit of the underlying claim.
Councils reject the majority of claims on the Section 58 defence. But 114,230 were paid out in the last four years, totalling £11 million. They are not all rejected. Evidence, persistence and correct submission to the correct authority are what separate the successful claims from the ones that disappear.
MotorBuzz has been covering the systematic way councils and government treat drivers as a revenue source rather than as stakeholders — the full picture is in our Drivers Revenge section. The pothole crisis sits in a different part of the same picture: roads funded insufficiently, repaired inadequately, with the cost of that failure landing on the drivers who paid the road tax and fuel duty that was supposed to prevent it.
Sources: RAC Pothole Index, January 2026 | Regit, March 2026 | Select Car Leasing Great British Pothole Poll 2026 | First Response Finance UK Pothole Index 2025 | Honest John, February 2026 | Treadfirst / AA damage data | Intelligent Motoring alloy claims data | DfT traffic light council ratings system | Autumn Budget 2025 roads funding commitment | MotorBuzz Drivers Revenge