How we manage and repair potholes
A pothole is a large, deep hole in the road, often formed when roads freeze and thaw repeatedly or during heavy rainfall or flooding. Changes in temperature causes damage to the surface and layers of the road become unstuck or the surface breaks. Traffic travelling over these weaken road surfaces then cause holes to appear.
Every street is visited on a regular schedule by an inspector to monitor any defects and identify issues. However, if a pothole has been on the road for a while we might not know about it.
What happens when you report a pothole
When a pothole is reported online, we aim to inspect it within five working days. However, this can take longer depending on staffing, time of the year and resources.
An inspector will assess the pothole and depending on its level of risk, will then arrange for a repair. Most pothole repairs will be made with a temporary or semi-permanent material to make them safe as quickly as possible.
- Category 1 – critical risk, repaired within 24 hours.
- Category 2 – high risk, repaired within five working days.
- Category 3 – medium risk. It can take up to 60 working days during busy periods, but the average time is much shorter.
- Category 4 – low risk, no specific timescale for repair. If you think the condition of the pothole is deteriorating over time, please let us know by reporting it again.
- Category 5 – no risk, no action needed, although these will be monitored.
If you have reported the problem online and requested an update, we will email you to let you know the next steps.
Occasionally, meeting target response times may not be possible, particularly at certain times of the year, due to pressure on resources. This could be due to the high number of repairs that are needed after periods of bad weather, such as prolonged spells of heavy rain or snow, or freeze / thaw conditions.
How we repair potholes
The type of repair depends on a number of factors including:
- Size of the defect
- The location
- The road conditions
- Road materials
- Speed limit of the road
- Defect category
- Weather conditions
- Traffic management requirements
- Available budget and resources
- Works already planned for that road
For smaller potholes we use a material which can be poured into the hole and self-levels before forming a very hard surface and making the road safe.
In areas with multiple potholes in close proximity, we tend to use a hot material and overlay a larger area, or it may require more work like patching or resurfacing.
Multiple potholes on a road
There can be a few reasons why we may have repaired a pothole but not others on the same road:
- We may not be aware of the other potholes because they’ve not been reported to us.
- They may have been inspected and placed in a different repair category with a different timescale for repair.
- Larger potholes require different equipment - sometimes our teams fixing smaller holes don't have the right tools to fix larger ones so we need to ask another team to fix it. It may also be that only one pothole was reported.
