15 January 2026
The Pothole Partnership – comprising founding partners The AA, JCB, British Cycling, and the National Motorcyclists Council – is today (15 January 2026) calling for a transformative shift in road maintenance standards with a new proposal requiring highway contractors to provide a five year warranty on every non emergency pothole repair.
Marking National Pothole Day, the Partnership argues that the UK’s long standing reliance on short term “patch and run” fixes is failing road users, costing drivers millions in vehicle damage and putting cyclists and motorcyclists at serious risk of injury. New AA figures released today show 613,638 pothole related callouts in 2025 – an average of 1,681 every day. Despite a slight year on year improvement (see table), the scale of the problem remains severe, with 58,380 AA callouts in January alone and 58,275 in December 2025.
“Despite billions spent by successive governments, our patrols still attended more than 600,000 pothole related breakdowns last year.”
Costs
Typically the damage caused is punctures, damaged wheels, steering and suspension faults and typically costs hundreds of pounds in repairs. The AA estimates that the average repair cost for a pothole incident in 2025 was £350 which represents a cost of £215m per year for AA members or £645m if scaled up to cover all UK drivers. This is an increase of £66m from 2024 estimates.
Edmund King, AA president, said:
“Potholes are more than an irritation – they cause damage, disruption and danger on a daily basis. Despite billions spent by successive governments, our patrols still attended more than 600,000 pothole related breakdowns last year. That is simply unacceptable for a modern road network.
“A five year warranty on every non emergency pothole repair would be a game changer. It shifts the focus from short term patches to long lasting repairs and ensures accountability from those carrying out the work. Drivers, cyclists and motorcyclists deserve roads that stay fixed – not ones that crumble again within weeks. The damage costs drivers hundreds of thousands of pounds and can cost those on two wheels their lives.”
Partnership urges consistency and innovation
FOI requests by the Partnership reveal stark inconsistencies in how councils measure and manage pothole repairs, with 78 different methods used across the UK – and one council admitting it does not measure repair longevity at all. Another reported completing more than 31,000 pothole repairs in a year, yet over 2,200 of those locations needed repeat visits.
The Partnership argues that more widespread use of permanent, automated repair solutions – such as the JCB Pothole Pro, which can deliver long lasting repairs four times faster and at half the cost of traditional manual methods – would significantly reduce the burden on local authorities and taxpayers.
Call to government
The five year warranty proposal has been raised with the Department for Transport and would place clear responsibility on the contractor that completes a repair. If the pothole reappears within five years, the fix would be completed free of charge under warranty.
The partnership welcomes the DfT’s release of the Road Maintenance Ratings Map this week allowing road users to see which local highway authorities are fixing potholes effectively.
It supports the partnership’s long-standing call for greater transparency on how local authorities are spending taxpayers’ money on tackling the pothole plague.
However, the partnership would like to see greater transparency in the figures on whether each authority is investing in the technology that delivers permanent pothole repairs provides rather than short term ‘patch-and-run’ fixes.
With just 10% (16 out of 154) of local authorities rated green in the DfT’s latest data, the partnership believes there is still a huge amount of work to do to ensure the billions of pounds that successive governments have announced to fix the pothole plague is spent effectively.
Pothole Dodger
Potholes are the number one transport concern for 96% of AA members and such a big issue that The AA App now incorporates a game called ‘Pothole Dodger’. In the fun and fast interactive game to celebrate National Pothole Day, competitors need to avoid the potholes and AA members can be entered into a prize draw to win prizes (see AA App for details).