Half of drivers have to swerve past potholes EVERY day

Britain’s pothole crisis has been exposed by a study showing that nearly half of us swerve every day to avoid them.

Two-thirds of motorists surveyed said their roads had gotten worse over the past year – and only one in 14 believed there had been an improvement.

Those in Scotland and Wales were particularly frustrated, with 80 per cent and 76 per cent respectively saying they encountered more potholes than a year ago.

And 45 percent of all survey participants said they swerved every day to avoid potholes.

The Daily Mail is campaigning to end the pit plague.

The Daily Mail campaigns to end pothole plague and calls for fuel excise revenue to be earmarked for council pothole budgets

The AA’s Jack Cousens said: ‘With motorists and cyclists looking like downhill skiers as they slalom through potholes, it’s no wonder so many think road conditions have deteriorated over the past year.’ Just under half of motorists reported damage to their car from hitting a pothole, according to the poll by market research firm Consumer Intelligence.

Of those, one in five said they had incurred costly repair bills in excess of £100.

All major A roads and motorways in England are maintained by National Highways, with the Welsh Government and Transport Scotland managing the major roads in their countries. However, municipalities in all three countries are expected to provide smaller roads.

Nearly three in ten of the 1,079 respondents said they had reported a pothole to a local authority. Of those, 15 percent said the council had completed repairs within a week, a fifth said it took more than a month, and 23 percent said they were still waiting for the works to be completed.

Analysis of municipal data by Comparethemarket has identified which municipalities are most lagging behind in road repairs

Municipalities argue historic budget cuts and rising repair costs mean they can’t afford to keep an eye on the potholes. Half of the drivers surveyed blamed the pothole infestation on a lack of funding from the government.

However, six out of ten said that the municipalities failed to solve them properly.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is under increasing pressure to provide local authorities with extra money for road repairs in next week’s budget.

Last month, the Daily Mail called for fuel excise revenues to be earmarked for council budgets. Overall, 64 percent of drivers supported this idea.

A government spokesman said it is investing £5bn in local motorway maintenance from 2020 to 2025 to fill millions of potholes a year alongside other road repairs.

Councilor David Renard, from the Local Government Association, said the government spent ‘last year 31 times more per mile on motorway and A-road maintenance than it did on funding councils to repair crumbling local roads’.

Tell us about the worst potholes in your area and we might fix it for FREE!

Readers of Daily Mail, MailOnline and This is Money can send in photos of the worst potholes near where they live and you’ll automatically be entered into the drawing to have it removed permanently for free.

If a winner is chosen, JCB will send its crater-repairing PotholePro machine to repair it.

Send an email to potholes@dailymail.co.uk following the five steps below:

1. Send an email with the subject ‘POTHOLE’.

2. Add an image no larger than 2MB of the pit.

3. Include a brief description of the pothole and how bad you think it is.

4. Tell us where it is, including the street name and the nearest city, town or village.

5. Please include your full name and a phone number in case we need to contact you to learn more about your nominated pothole – and possibly fix it.

We’ll pick a selection of the worst potholes you’ve nominated and let readers vote which potholes should be repaired for free by JCB’s PotholePro.

Personal data is not shared with third parties.

> Find out more about the JCB PotholePro and how it can repair a road near you