Over 27,000 potholes repaired in Shropshire in past 12 months

A Roadmaster tackling potholes in south Shropshire

Shropshire Council repaired more than 27,000 potholes on the county’s roads in the year from April 2021 to April 2022, latest figures show.

In total, 27,109 were treated – an increase of 16% on the previous year – with the number of outstanding potholes falling from 8,415 to 4,599 in the same period.

And thanks to improvements in the way that potholes are tackled, the number of permanent ‘right first time’ repairs is now over 90%, compared with less than 50% in the year 2018/19.

As part of efforts to improve the county’s roads, crews from Shropshire Council and its contractor Kier are out every day tackling potholes in a variety of ways.

Methods used include the new Multihog road planer, the innovative Texpatch process, used to treat urban roads, two Roadmaster vehicles, which are used to carry out jet-patching on rural roads, and more traditional repairs by gangs.

Meanwhile, the council’s annual resurfacing and surface dressing programmes help to prevent potholes forming in the first place.

The Multihog in action near Ludlow

Dean Carroll, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for highways, said:

“Last year we vowed to improve the county’s roads. These figures show that’s exactly what we’re doing.

“Repairing more than 27,000 potholes across the county in just 12 months is a fantastic achievement and I want to say a big thank you to all the staff from Shropshire Council and from our partners Kier and WSP for all their continued hard work. It really is making a difference.”

Andy Wilde, Shropshire Council’s head of highways, said:

“We’re committed to carrying our permanent ‘right first-time’ repairs wherever possible, and almost all pothole repairs are now classed as such.

“This has been as a result of changing ways of working, streamlining the process to ensure that our contractor can best deliver a good service on behalf of the council, and significantly reducing the cost of each defect repair. This has enabled more potholes to be repaired than ever before within the same budget – and prevents the need to make return visits to the same pothole.”

For more information, visit www.shropshire.gov.uk/highways.