Kent County Council and Potholes

Let's be clear: there are absolutely masses of potholes across Kent.

The Growth, Environment and Transport Cabinet Committee at Kent Councty Council on 13 January discussed exactly that.

There is essentially a £750 million backlog of work to do on Kent roads. This year there was a £67 million year budget to fix them, while all the time they continue to get worse.

We’re not even keeping pace with repairing the roads. As the papers for that meeting says, just to keep the roads in the condition they are now, you would need to spend another £110 million a year. To start to cut that backlog more on top of that.

“2.6.5 This remains significantly below what asset management principles identify are required to achieve “steady state” (asset in the same condition as the prior year) which would require an additional £110m pa to be invested, let alone to make any significant in-roads into the current backlog of three-quarters of a billion pounds.”

I discussed that a bit in the meeting yesterday, which was webcast.

https://kent.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/1048390/start_time/2431000

To be fair - this is also a national problem, and it has taken decades of underinvestment to get here. Kent's roads are bad, but the same applies in many places across the country. It's not just a Kent problem, but Kent is certainly badly hit by the problem.

For specific potholes, generally the defence (used by Councils across the country) is that if they were not aware of the pothole, they are not responsible for damage caused by it. If a pothole is seen, and reported, if someone subsequently gets their vehicle damaged by hitting it, they are much more likely to get compensation for a claim. The County can reasonably say they haven’t got the team or money to check every road every day, but if they have had it reported and not fixed in a reasonable period, they no longer have that defence.

You can see if a pothole has been reported using the pothole reporting facility at https://www.kent.gov.uk/roads-and-travel/report-or-track-a-problem-on-the-road-or-pavement (you can zoom into the map and see if a problem has already been reported at the location).

The best way we can both get holes repaired quicker, and improve the chances of those that get damage hitting them getting compensation for damage caused, is to report them (I and others report many a year, but I can’t check all roads every day either!). I’d encourage any local resident who seems a pothole, particularly one that could cause damage, to report it at https://www.kent.gov.uk/roads-and-travel/report-or-track-a-problem-on-the-road-or-pavement