Reports by residents of potholes in East Sussex more than doubled last year.
In figures released in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, East Sussex County Council said it received 26,309 reports of potholes and other carriageway defects in 2022/23.
This was more than double the previous financial year (2021/22), which saw 12,637 reports, and close to double the 13,224 reported in 2020/21.
It is important to note these figures are for numbers reported by residents, rather than the total number of potholes and defects. The same problem may have been reported more than once by different people.
The council has attributed the rise to wet weather the previous winter and in the past few months.
An East Sussex Highways spokesperson said: “The winter of 2022/23 was one of the wettest on record and, unsurprisingly, took a toll on roads across East Sussex, as it did across the country.
“This 2023/24 winter has also seen significant rainfall levels. To deal with the increasing number of potholes over the winter period in 2023, we had nearly three times the usual number of crews available to carry out repairs.
“We are responsible for more than 2,000 miles of road so prioritise our work, according to locally-approved policies, to ensure potholes that present the greatest danger to road users are repaired as quickly as possible.”
These policies broadly split potholes into three categories, with the council’s speed of response tied to how severe the defect is. The council aims to ‘make safe’ those of the greatest severity — measuring more than 100mm deep — within two hours. These are recorded as category one potholes.
Category two potholes measure between 60mm and 99mm deep. The council aims to repair these within five days. Category three potholes are between 40mm and 59mm and the council aims to repair these within 28 days. All other potholes are not usually repaired until their condition worsens.
According to the FOI figures, almost half of potholes or other carriageway defects reported between 2020/21 and 2022/23 did not meet the criteria for intervention.
In all 24,127 out of 52,170 reports did not meet the criteria. This breaks down to 7,033 out of 13,224 potholes reported in 2020/21, 6,556 out of 12,637 in 2021/22 and 10,538 out of 26,309 in 2022/23.
Of those that did meet the criteria, the council was able to repair most within its target time frames, although some repairs saw delays.
:: This report was compiled by Huw Oxburgh of the BBC-funded Local Democracy Reporting Service. The Eastbourne Reporter receives this service by meeting BBC criteria as a regulated news website with high journalistic standards.
If they repaired potholes properly instead of the shoddy repairs they currently carry out, they wouldn’t have to keep coming back to repair the same potholes time after time. And why don’t they clean-up the sub-surface hardcore that comes from the potholes that they just leave all over the road and in the gutters?