Councils in England have been told to prove action on tackling the ‘pothole plague’ or lose cash for roads repairs.

Every council in England must now publish how many potholes they’ve filled or lose out on millions of pounds

Announced as the Prime Minister also revealed £4.8bn funding for major roads, the Government has said that every council in England must now publish how many potholes they’ve filled or lose out on millions of pounds.

From mid-April, local authorities in England will start to receive their share of the Government’s record £1.6bn highway maintenance funding, which includes the £500m announced in the Autumn Budget 2024; enough to fill seven million potholes a year.

But to get the full amount, all councils in England must from today (24 March 2025) publish annual progress reports and prove public confidence in their work. Local authorities who fail to meet these strict conditions will see 25% of the uplift (£125m in total) withheld.

Also today, the Transport Secretary has unveiled £4.8bn funding for 2025/6 for National Highways to deliver critical road schemes and maintain motorways and major A-roads. This includes vital new projects on the A47 and A3 while also furthering pivotal schemes in construction, such as the A428 Black Cat scheme in Cambridgeshire, as part of the ‘Plan for Change’.

Latest figures from the RAC show drivers encounter an average of six potholes per mile in England and Wales, and pothole damage to cars costs an average £600 to fix. According to the AA, fixing potholes is a priority for 96% of drivers.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: “British people are bored of seeing their politicians aimlessly pointing at potholes with no real plan to fix them. That ends with us. We’ve done our part by handing councils the cash and certainty they need – now it’s up to them to get on with the job, put that money to use and prove they’re delivering for their communities.”

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said the Government was tackling the pothole plague “after years of neglect” and building vital roads while “ensuring every penny is delivering results for the taxpayer”.

“The public deserves to know how their councils are improving their local roads, which is why they will have to show progress or risk losing 25% of their £500m funding boost.

“Our Plan for Change is reversing a decade of decline and mending our pothole-ridden roads, which damage cars and make pedestrians and cyclists less safe.”

To ensure councils are acting, they must now publish reports on their websites by 30 June 2025, detailing how much they are spending, how many potholes they have filled, what percentage of their roads are in what condition, and how they are minimising streetworks disruption.

They will also be required to show how they are spending more on long-term preventative maintenance programmes and that they have robust plans for the wetter winters the country is experiencing, which exacerbate pothole problems.

By the end of October, councils must also show they are ensuring communities have their say on what work they should be doing, and where. The public can also help by reporting potholes to their local council, via a dedicated online portal.

Edmund King, AA president and member of the Pothole Partnership, said getting councils to show value for money before getting full funding was a “big step in the right direction” and would encourage “a more concerted attack on the plague of potholes” while also encouraging local authorities to share best practice.

The Local Government Association said the additional £500m would help start to address the previously ever-growing backlog of local road repairs, which now stands at almost £17bn according to this year’s Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey, published last week by the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA).

Cllr Adam Hug, transport spokesperson for the Local Government Association, also said it was “in everyone’s interests to ensure that public money is well spent”.

But he added: “This includes the Government playing its full part by using the Spending Review to ensure that councils receive sufficient, long-term funding certainty, so they can focus their efforts on much more cost-effective, preventative measures rather than reactively fixing potholes, which is more expensive.”

The 2025 AIA report revealed over £20bn has been spent on carriageway maintenance in England and Wales over the last decade and a pothole has been filled every 18 seconds, every day, over this time span.

But David Giles, chair of the AIA, warned that the short-term allocation of this funding has led to “no quantifiable uplift in the condition and resilience of the network”.

Commenting on today’s Department for Transport’s announcement, the AIA welcomed the commitment to local roads spending but said short-term cash injections, “even with greater accountability and strings attached”, were not likely to improve conditions.

“If we want our local roads to improve, the focus needs to shift from the number of potholes filled to giving local highway engineers the tools to do the job so that they don’t form in the first place.

“Local authorities have told us they would need their budgets to more than double for next five to 10 years to tackle the backlog of repairs. That’s why we have been calling for a multi-year frontloaded and ringfenced funding commitment, similar to those that the rail and motorway sectors benefit from.”