UK Pothole Breakdowns Hit a Record High as Repair Backlog Reaches £18.62 Billion

• RAC patrols attended 26,048 breakdowns in 2025 caused by potholes wrecking shock absorbers, springs and wheels, up from 22,703 the year before, and the first two months of 2026 are already running far ahead of last year.
• The Asphalt Industry Alliance says the repair backlog across England and Wales has reached £18.62 billion and would take 12 years to clear even with a recent funding boost.
• Nine in ten pothole compensation claims against councils are rejected under a 1980s legal defence, but drivers who gather the right evidence still get paid.

Your Suspension Bill Might Not Be Your Fault

A driver who feels a hard jolt through the steering wheel on a familiar road this winter is not imagining that things have got worse. RAC data shows pothole-related breakdowns hitting levels not seen in recent record-keeping, and the bill for fixing the roads that cause the damage has grown to a sum that would take more than a decade to spend, even with councils working flat out.

The Data Behind the Record Breakdown Numbers

In January 2026, RAC members logged 5,106 pothole mentions when reporting breakdowns, an average of 165 a day. In January 2025 that figure stood at 63 a day. February 2026 brought 6,290 pothole mentions, against 1,842 in the same month a year earlier. Reports peaked at 336 in a single day on 6 February, more than double the worst day recorded the previous winter.

Combined, January and February 2026 produced 11,396 pothole mentions, an average of 193 a day across the two months. Across the whole of 2025, RAC patrols attended 26,048 breakdowns where damaged shock absorbers, broken suspension springs or distorted wheels pointed to poor road surfaces as the cause, a jump of 3,345 on the 22,703 recorded in 2024. The RAC also logged 20 percent more puncture callouts over the same period, a sign that sharp-edged potholes are shredding tyres alongside suspension components.

A wet start to the year is part of the story. Water pooling in cracked tarmac widens small defects into full potholes far faster than dry weather does, and this winter has delivered plenty of standing water on roads that were already showing signs of wear.

Why the Backlog Keeps Growing Even as Funding Rises

The Asphalt Industry Alliance’s ALARM survey, based on responses from a record 79 percent of local authorities in England and Wales, put the one-time cost of clearing the entire carriageway repair backlog at £18.62 billion in its 2026 report. At current spending levels that backlog would take 12 years to clear.

Average highway maintenance budgets rose 17 percent, and councils still filled 1.9 million potholes over the past year, more than 5,200 a day. Yet councils told the survey they need an extra £1.37 billion a year just to hold the network at its current condition, a figure that has grown 10 percent on the year before. About half of the local road network, 51 percent, is in good structural condition with 15 or more years of life left, up 3 percentage points on the previous survey. Almost one in six local roads, equivalent to more than 32,500 miles, has less than five years of structural life remaining, and it is that shrinking minority of roads producing most of the breakdown callouts.

Filling a pothole is a temporary patch rather than a permanent fix. A road with less than five years of structural life left will keep reopening the same defects through freeze-thaw cycles and heavy traffic, which is why the breakdown numbers keep climbing even as councils report record numbers of potholes filled.

Repair costs also work against councils trying to close the gap. A reactive pothole fill, the kind logged 5,200 times a day, costs a fraction of resurfacing the whole stretch of carriageway properly. Councils under budget pressure default to the cheap, temporary option. It stretches a fixed pot of money across more miles of road, though the underlying surface keeps deteriorating underneath the patch regardless. Every mile treated this way rather than resurfaced adds to next year’s backlog instead of shrinking it, and the RAC’s own patrol data on repeat suspension callouts to the same postcodes bears that pattern out.

The Legal Defence That Blocks Nine in Ten Claims

Drivers who submit a compensation claim after suspension or tyre damage run into Section 58 of the Highways Act 1980, a defence that lets a council avoid paying out if it can show it inspected the road at reasonable intervals and had no record of the defect before the damage happened. Roughly nine in ten claims are rejected on this basis, and a council simply asserting the defence is not, on its own, proof that it applies. The authority has to produce its actual inspection records for the road in question, not just a general policy statement.

Many drivers give up the moment a rejection letter arrives citing Section 58. Freedom of Information requests submitted to individual councils for the inspection log covering the specific stretch of road, on the specific date, regularly turn up inspection intervals that fall outside a council’s own published maintenance policy, which weakens the defence considerably.

A council’s published policy typically sets an inspection frequency for each road category, monthly for a busy A-road, perhaps every three or six months for a quiet residential street. If the inspection log shows the actual gap between visits ran longer than the policy promises, that is direct evidence the council failed its own standard, and a rejected claim built on that gap has real grounds for appeal or escalation to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

How to Build a Claim That Actually Gets Paid

Report the pothole to the responsible authority first, using the gov.uk road reporting tool, which creates a timestamped record independent of your own claim. Photograph the pothole itself, including something for scale such as a coin or a shoe, and photograph the vehicle damage before any repair work begins.

Get at least two written repair quotes from independent garages rather than relying on a single dealer estimate. Submit a formal claim letter to the council’s highways department by recorded delivery or email with a read receipt, attaching every photograph and quote. Councils typically have 28 days to acknowledge a claim and up to three months to respond in full. If the response cites Section 58 without evidence, submit a Freedom of Information request for the inspection records covering that road for the 12 months before the damage occurred, and resubmit the claim with whatever gaps that record reveals.

What Happens Next

The wet-weather pattern behind the January and February surge shows no sign of reversing quickly, and the ALARM survey’s 12-year clearance estimate assumes funding stays at its current, already increased level. Any driver who feels a bang through the wheel this year should assume it is worth checking the road’s condition and their own claim rights before booking the repair, rather than paying for a broken shock absorber out of pocket and moving on.

A repair bill for a single damaged shock absorber typically runs into several hundred pounds once labour is added, and a distorted alloy wheel or a pair of shredded tyres can push the total well past that. Multiply the RAC’s 26,048 suspension-related breakdowns across 2025 by even a modest average repair cost and the sum insured drivers are quietly absorbing themselves, rather than reclaiming from the authority responsible for the road, runs into tens of millions of pounds a year nationally. Keeping the photographs, the quotes and the report reference number from the moment the pothole is first hit gives a driver everything needed to start a claim later, whatever point they eventually decide to actually submit one, whether that is straight away or only after totting up a season’s worth of repair bills.

Sources:

• RAC: Potholes hidden in puddles wreak havoc with drivers in wet start to 2026
• Asphalt Industry Alliance: ALARM survey 2026
• GOV.UK: Report a pothole
• Motoring Chronicle: Nine in 10 pothole damage claims are rejected under a 1980s legal defence
• Motoring Chronicle: Road damage caused 71 breakdowns every day in 2025