Councils That Miss This Month’s Pothole Deadline Risk Losing a Third of Their Funding

• Every council in England must publish a report this month proving how well it repairs potholes and how often crews go back to fix the same stretch of road.
• Councils that miss the deadline, or ignore the new guidance, lose almost a third of this year’s highways maintenance funding, worth up to £524 million nationally.
• The reports feed a public red, amber and green rating map, so drivers can check their own council’s record before they challenge a repair bill or a rejected pothole compensation claim.

The Report Card Your Council Has to Publish This Month

For the first time, every council in England has to show its working on potholes. New Department for Transport rules require local authorities to publish a highways maintenance transparency report before the end of September, setting out how well they repair roads, how often crews return to fix the same stretch of tarmac, and whether they are paying for full resurfacing rather than patching over cracks. A council that misses the deadline, or fails to follow the guidance, loses almost a third of this year’s highways maintenance funding under rules the department confirmed in June.

The reports are due out this month, which means the data is either already public or about to land for every one of England’s highway authorities. Drivers who have spent years reporting the same pothole three times over now get a way to check whether their own council is one of the ones the government has singled out for special attention.

What Councils Now Have to Prove

The requirements were issued on 9 June 2026 and apply to every highway authority in England. Councils must show how many potholes they filled, how many of those repairs failed and needed a second visit within a set period, and how much of their budget went on long-term resurfacing instead of short-term patching. Roads and Buses Minister Simon Lightwood said the guidance ends a system where drivers have been “left incensed by short-term work being prioritised over genuine long-term repairs,” adding that councils will now have to show not just how many potholes they filled but what they are doing to stop filling the same one twice.

The new data updates the red, amber and green ratings the department first published earlier this year on its road maintenance ratings map. Green-rated authorities have already demonstrated best practice, including investment in long-term pothole prevention and full resurfacing programmes rather than patch repairs. Everything else gets marked amber or red, and the label is not just cosmetic. It now carries a funding consequence.

The Money on the Line

Highways maintenance funding for local authorities totals £1.6 billion this year, and a related measure confirmed by the department in April means up to a third of that, £524 million, can be withheld from councils that fail to meet the requirements. A record £7.3 billion in long-term funding has also been allocated to help councils fix the backlog of repairs properly rather than filling the same hole twice. Councils rated red on the map get an additional £300,000 of expert support to raise their standards, developed with the Local Council Roads Innovation Group and the UK Roads Leadership Group Asset Management Board. The message from the department is blunt: publish the data and show genuine improvement, or lose the cash.

RAC head of policy Simon Williams said poorly repaired potholes that reopen within weeks or months are one of drivers’ biggest frustrations, calling bad repairs “a waste of time and money.” He said fixing potholes once and carrying out preventative maintenance that stops them forming in the first place is a significant step toward improving Britain’s roads for the long term, rather than the short-term patch-and-dash approach that has defined council roadworks for years.

How to Check Your Own Council’s Record

Once councils publish their reports this month, anyone can look up their own local authority on the government’s road maintenance ratings map at maps.dft.gov.uk and see exactly how it scores. A red rating means a council has been told to improve and is receiving extra government support to do it. If your council has a poor record of repeat repairs on the same stretch of road, that data becomes useful evidence if you later need to challenge how a pothole compensation claim was handled, especially where a council leans on the Section 58 defence under the Highways Act 1980 to reject a payout. Some councils already reject the vast majority of pothole compensation claims they receive, and a published record of repeat failures on your road strengthens the case that a defect was known about and not properly fixed.

What to Do If You’ve Already Hit a Pothole

Pothole damage costs drivers an average of £500 to repair, according to the department’s own figures, and that bill is shared by ordinary motorists, ambulance services and even organ donation charities that rely on cars to get life-saving transplants to hospital on time. If your car has been damaged, report the pothole to your council immediately through its website, photograph the hole with something for scale next to it, keep your repair invoice and garage report, and note the date and exact location. Then check whether your council’s own transparency report shows a pattern of repeat failures on that road. A council that cannot show it fixed a known defect properly has a considerably weaker case for refusing your claim outright.

The Backlog Behind the New Rules

The scale of the problem explains why the government has attached money to transparency rather than leaving it as guidance. Industry estimates of the cost to bring England’s local roads up to a resurfaced standard have run as high as £18.6 billion, built up over more than a decade in which councils patched thousands of individual defects rather than resurfacing whole roads that needed it. Every patch repair is cheaper in the short term and more expensive over ten years, as the same stretch of tarmac fails again within a season or two, and a crew has to be sent back out to fix it a second or third time. That repeat-visit pattern is exactly what the new transparency reports are designed to expose, road by road, council by council.

This month’s reports follow an earlier warning shot in April, when the department first confirmed that up to a third of highways funding could be withheld from councils that failed to meet its requirements. September’s publication deadline is the point where that threat becomes real, and it is also the point where residents get to see, for the first time in one place, whether their council has been quietly diverting resurfacing budgets into short-term patching or really tackling the backlog.

A Patch-Up Culture Running Out of Road

England’s pothole backlog has built up over more than a decade of reactive, underfunded repairs, and this month’s reports are the government’s attempt to force transparency onto a system that has often rewarded the quickest fix rather than the most lasting one. Whether the new rules change conditions on the ground quickly is a separate question from whether they change what drivers can see. For the first time, motorists will have their own council’s repair record in black, amber or red, rather than having to rely on how many times they have personally driven over the same hole.

Drivers with a school run, a daily commute or a regular route to an elderly relative’s house are often the ones who notice a repeat pothole first, long before it shows up in any council spreadsheet. Reporting the same defect a second or third time, and keeping a note of the dates, now doubles as a way of building your own evidence file alongside the council’s official transparency data, in case you ever need to prove a defect was known about well before it damaged your car.

Sources:

• Department for Transport: How well does your council fix potholes?
• GOV.UK: Completing a local highways maintenance transparency report
• DfT: Local road maintenance ratings map