Labour's Pothole Promise Under Scrutiny as Repair Figures Show Decline
A major investigation by Full Fact, the UK's largest fact-checking charity, has revealed significant challenges facing Labour's manifesto pledge to fix an additional one million potholes in England each year. The analysis of transparency reports from over 150 local highway authorities suggests the government may struggle to deliver on this commitment, at least in the short term.
Declining Repair Numbers Cast Doubt on Targets
The comprehensive analysis found that pothole repairs actually fell slightly in the 2024/25 financial year, decreasing by 3.5% compared to the previous year. This decline occurred despite Labour's prominent election promise to dramatically increase pothole repairs across England's road network.
Perhaps more concerning for the government's ambitions are early combined estimates from 85 councils that project no overall increase in pothole repairs for the 2025/26 financial year. These projections directly contradict the scale of improvement needed to meet Labour's ambitious target of fixing an additional million potholes annually.
The Scale of the Challenge
Full Fact examined all 154 reports from councils and Transport for London, collecting data on pothole repairs in recent years and estimates for the current financial year. Among the 149 councils that provided usable data for 2024/25, they reported filling approximately 1.85 million potholes that year.
This figure reveals the magnitude of Labour's challenge. To fulfill their pledge of fixing an additional million potholes, authorities would need to repair at least 2.85 million potholes in 2025/26—a substantial increase of over 50% from the previous year's total.
When examining a like-for-like comparison of 146 local authorities that provided data for both 2023/24 and 2024/25, the analysis shows these authorities filled an estimated 1.76 million potholes in 2024/25. This represents approximately 64,000 fewer repairs than the previous year, highlighting the downward trend in repair activity.
Government Action and Funding Commitments
The government has taken some steps toward addressing the pothole problem. In March 2025, the Department for Transport informed English local authorities that 25% of the extra £500 million in local road maintenance funding would depend on councils producing detailed reports about their road networks by the end of June 2025.
Furthermore, in November's budget, the government announced it would commit over £2 billion annually by 2029/30 for local authorities to tackle potholes. Ministers claimed this funding would enable them to exceed their commitment to fix an additional million potholes per year.
It's important to note that council budgets for 2024/25 were set before Labour came into office in July 2024, and the party was only in government for nine months of that financial year. This context may partially explain why repair numbers haven't yet shown the dramatic increase promised during the election campaign.
Significant Variation Between Councils
The investigation revealed enormous variation in how different councils approach pothole repairs and data collection. Birmingham City Council, for example, estimated it filled 4,514 potholes in 2024/25—a sharp drop from 9,332 the previous year—but projected it would increase repairs to 6,788 in 2025/26, representing a 50% increase.
Other councils showed different patterns. North Tyneside Borough Council filled 6,045 potholes in 2024/25 and estimated similar numbers for the current year, while South Gloucestershire Council projected it would fill around 10,000 potholes this year, 18% fewer than the 12,148 repaired in 2024/25.
South Gloucestershire Council attributed its projected decrease to weather patterns, noting that drier conditions in early 2025 had resulted in around a third fewer potholes being reported compared to the same period in 2024.
Fundamental Data Challenges
The investigation uncovered fundamental problems with pothole data collection that make national comparisons difficult. There is no nationally agreed definition of what constitutes a pothole, despite calls from organisations like the RAC for a standardised definition. This means a depression of a certain depth might be repaired by one council but ignored by another.
Additionally, councils count potholes in dramatically different ways. Some authorities appear to count clusters of potholes as single repairs, while others count each individual depression separately. This discrepancy means the actual number of potholes repaired could be significantly higher than some councils' estimates suggest.
Further complicating matters, some councils include potholes filled on pathways within their statistics, while others restrict their counts to road repairs only. These inconsistencies make it challenging to create accurate national pictures or reliable year-on-year comparisons.
Looking Ahead
Full Fact will not have a reliable picture of what has happened in the current financial year until councils publish their next transparency reports. The government asked local authorities to produce rough estimates for 2025/26 pothole repairs in their 2025 reports, but Full Fact could only find 85 councils that had done so.
Between them, those 85 councils expect to fill roughly the same number of potholes in 2025/26 (approximately 813,000) as they did in 2024/25 (approximately 835,000). This stagnation occurs despite the government's high-profile pledge to dramatically increase repair numbers.
The investigation highlights the complex reality behind what might seem like a straightforward infrastructure promise. With varying local approaches, inconsistent data collection methods, and the practical challenges of road maintenance, Labour faces a considerable challenge in delivering on its pothole pledge within the promised timeframe.
