The period from April to June 2025 was not a heartening one as far as the UK’s continuing pothole epidemic is concerned, at least according to RAC data.
Publishing its latest annual Pothole Index, the automotive services company revealed that over the three-month period, it had attended 6,575 breakdowns involving damaged shock absorbers, broken suspension springs, and bent wheels.
These are all issues that are typically linked to deteriorating road surfaces.
The second-quarter figure represents a significant rise from the 6,050 cases that had been seen during the equivalent period of 2024. Putting aside what the RAC described as a “notoriously harsh” opening quarter, the latest reading was the highest quarterly total since the April-to-June period of 2023.
“A troubling picture for UK motorists”
The above data suggests a trend that is backed up by other recent statistics. The RAC has also disclosed, for example, that the 12 months up to 30th June 2025 saw its patrols handle 24,763 pothole-related breakdowns, which was an average of 68 per day.
That overall figure for the past year includes more than 500 additional incidents compared to the year ending March 2025. This illustrates a deterioration in the UK’s pothole situation that the company has said “paints a troubling picture for UK motorists”.
Among the three most frequent types of pothole damage, the firm said broken suspension springs topped the list as the most common. This, the company stated, was likely due to the part such components played in absorbing shocks on the road.
The RAC added that it had spent the second quarter responding to 4,779 such breakdowns, which was 23% up from the 3,887 cases recorded for the corresponding period last year.
In light of these statistics, it should be no surprise that pothole-related incidents accounted for 1.2% of all RAC breakdowns in the latest second-quarter period. This was the highest proportion seen in seven years, and a significant jump from 1% in Q2 2024.
So, what has caused this latest spate of pothole issues?
The RAC has attributed the surge in pothole-related vehicle breakdowns to colder-than-average temperatures during the early months of this year. Such conditions, the company said, had the effect of accelerating the formation of potholes.
Water seeping into cracks in untreated roads, and subsequently freezing and expanding, worsens the damage to the road surface.
As previously reported by our transport consultants, the UK Government has announced the allocation of £1.6 billion of funding to highways authorities in England to allow for the filling of potholes and the repair of roads.
However, RAC head of policy Simon Williams cautioned: “Although English councils received a record amount of funding for roads at the start of the new financial year in April, it’s too early to notice the benefit of increased maintenance programmes.”
Nonetheless, he expressed hope that authorities in receipt of the cash injection had been “putting their allocated funding pots to good work in the summer surface dressing season which runs from April to September.”
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