A motorist, who is unofficially named 'Mr. Pothole', has hit out at the Government's handling of the road crisis, claiming "we've got a pothole Armageddon coming."
Mark Morrell, the UK's best-known pothole campaigner, spoke to GB News for National Pothole Day and said that the Government should be doing more.
New research has found that the AA dealt with 631,852 pothole-related incidents in 2023, the highest for five years.
A new partnership has been created to end the culture of “temporary patches” and create permanent measures with a JCB Pothole Pro vehicle.
The government has announced that they will be spending £8.3 billion on fixing the potholes on roads
GBNews
The JCB Pothole Pro vehicle comes equipped with three separate tools to cut, crop and clean, meaning a typical pothole can be repaired permanently in just eight minutes.
The government has announced that they will be spending £8.3 billion on fixing the potholes on roads and investing in the Pothole Pro vehicles. Rishi Sunak pledged to tackle “the scourge of potholes” with the funding for local roads maintenance in England.
Mark Morrell said: "The Pothole Pro is a very efficient and effective vehicle to carry out permanent repairs and I welcome the partnership.
"However, they don't go far enough. We need long-term resurfacing of our roads because repairing potholes is just a sign of failure.
More than 630,000 pothole-related incidents were dealt with by the AA GETTY"The government has given £8.3 billion, but that's over 11 years and they say that is enough to resurface 5000 miles of road.
"Well, surprise, surprise, we've got 250,000 miles of road, so that will do 2 per cent of the network over 10 years.
"We've already got a £14 billion backlog in carriageway maintenance in England and Wales. To be honest it's laughable.
"It's going to make no difference in terms of carrying out the resurfacing work. However, the extra money might be used to get kit like the Pothole Pro."
Mr Pothole said the government should be doing more
GBNews
When asked what he makes of the Government's pothole pledge, he said: "To be honest there have been so many times where they've thrown large figures at the general public and they take us for fools.
"It's not going to make a difference. We've got a network that's worth £600 billion that's been neglected for decades.
"These are all the signs from the callouts by motor organisations last week to the announcement of increased claims at record levels and the network's been failing.
"I've been talking about this for an awful long time. It's all coming home to us now and we got a pothole and Armageddon coming."
