Only one in 10 people in North Yorkshire are satisfied with pothole situation
Only one in 10 people in North Yorkshire are satisfied with the number of potholes in the roads, amidst national figures which the AA has said are “dismal”.
Calderdale has the same rating, while in Kirklees the satisfaction level is just 9 per cent - making it the worst reviewed council area for road quality in Yorkshire and the Humber.
More than a third of English councils have public pothole satisfaction at 10 per cent, which has been described by the AA as “dismal”.
The repair organisation called for an end to the “vicious cycle” of potholes being patched up only to reappear.
It analysed the latest results of an annual survey of more than 71,000 people conducted for the National Highways and Transport Network – a performance research organisation not related to Government-owned National Highways – in the early part of the summer.
Respondents were asked if the number of potholes and damaged roads in their local area was better, worse or stable compared with a year earlier.
The average satisfaction score for residents in 36 of the 96 local authority areas which participated was no more than 10 per cent.
Three councils, which cover East Sussex, Herefordshire and Nottinghamshire, received the lowest score of 5 per cent.
At the other end of the scale, eight council areas achieved a score of at least 20 per cent, such as Luton, Manchester and Southwark, in central London.
AA president Edmund King said: “Public satisfaction with the condition of local roads is at rock-bottom in too many places.
“Approval scores for changes in road conditions are dismal, even though we applaud those councils courageous enough to take part in the survey and subject themselves to public scrutiny.
“It has to be a priority to find out why large sums of money in grants and Government funds are failing to change public opinion.
“We often have a vicious circle of: pothole formed, damage caused, pothole patched, pothole reappears with more damage caused.”
A senior civil servant told MPs last week that there is a difference between what the Government’s local road condition statistics show and public perception.
Dame Bernadette Kelly, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Transport, said official figures suggest the situation is “stable” but acknowledged there is “a gap between our headline position and what most people’s experience of local roads looks and feels like”.
She told the Public Accounts Committee the Government has introduced a new standard for councils to report the condition of their roads, which means there are five possible ratings rather than three.
Local authorities are also being encouraged to use new technologies to ensure the data they gather is more detailed and robust.
The cost of bringing pothole-plagued local roads in England and Wales up to scratch has been estimated at £16.3 billion.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in her Budget last month that the Government will aim to fund work to fix an additional one million potholes in the 2024/25 financial year by increasing local roads maintenance funding in England by £500 million to nearly £1.6 billion.