The Department for Transport (DfT) allocated £500 million for highways maintenance in 2021/22. This is the second of five equal instalments from the £2.5 billion Potholes Fund, providing £500 million a year between 2020/21 and 2024/25, announced by the Chancellor in the 2020 Budget. But in the same announcement it was confirmed that that overall capital funding for local road maintenance this year will be £1.39 billion – down from £1.78 billion in 2020/21.
The latest ALARM 2021 Road Repair survey, estimates that a planned pothole repair costs a local council in England £41.61 to carry out on average.
LGA analysis of these figures show that councils could repair more than 9.5 million extra potholes with the funding lost from local road maintenance budgets this year.