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highways

No two potholes are the same...and not all potholes are equal

No two potholes are the same...and not all potholes are equal
Highways team fixing road surfaces

It’s a question we get asked a lot. “Why has the pothole down the road been repaired, but the one outside my house hasn’t?”

It isn’t random or based on who shouts loudest – it’s about managing risk with limited crews and budgets.

Each pothole is assessed based on the risk it poses, including:

  • Depth and size
  • Speed and volume of traffic on the road
  • Location (for example near junctions, bends or in wheel tracks)
  • Likely impact on cyclists, pedestrians and drivers

Repairs fall into different categories, with response times ranging from emergency repairs fixed within hours to lower risk defects that are scheduled into planned works.

The numbers are significant

💡
Last year alone, our teams repaired over 37,042 potholes and resurfaced more than 1.4 million square metres of road. Yet in January this year, we saw over 1,000 new defects reported a week, the vast majority of them potholes. That gives a sense of the scale of the challenge we’re dealing with.

Read more about why potholes are such a big problem this winter.

We are proactive in finding problems

We find potholes in two main ways:

1.    Through regular highways inspections.

Oxfordshire’s roads are inspected on a routine schedule by trained highway inspectors. These inspections pick up defects whether or not anyone has reported them.

2.    Through reports from residents

Around a quarter of all defects are reported by members of the public through FixMyStreet. These reports really do help, especially on quieter roads or footways where problems can develop between inspections.

Every single pothole you report is inspected and risk assessed. Not every defect needs immediate repair, but none are ignored.

Let’s work together to improve our roads

  • Lets work together to improve our roads
  • Report potholes on FixMyStreet.
  • Upload photos. If they show the size (with something for comparison like a set of keys alongside them) and the location (so we can tell where they are in the road), we can assess them more easily. That saves us time because we don’t need to send out a crew to check them. So, by just including a couple of photos, you can help speed things up.
  • Report early – small defects are easier and cheaper to fix.
  • Bear with us when traffic management is needed to do the job properly.

Cllr Andrew Gant, Cabinet Member for Transport Management, Oxfordshire County Council smiling at camera wearing grey suit
Cllr Andrew Gant, Cabinet Member for Transport Management, Oxfordshire County Council

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