Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what guidance his Department issues on best practice in tackling potholes.

To prevent potholes and other defects from forming in the first place, well-planned maintenance is vital, which is why the Department advocates a risk-based, whole life-cycle asset management approach to all aspects of the local highway network. There are various key bits of guidance that the Department recommends to local highway authorities, including a 2016 Code of Practice on Well Managed Highway Infrastructure, produced by the UK Roads Leadership Group and available via the website of the Chartered Institute for Highways and Transportation.

Other guidance includes the 2019 “Potholes: a repair guide” on which the Department worked with the Association of Directors, for Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (ADEPT), and which is on the ADEPT website. This recommends that local highway authorities should wherever possible make permanent rather than temporary repairs, with temporary repairs only appropriate in emergency circumstances or where safety cannot be managed using alternative approaches.

To help local highway authorities to understand the impacts of the changing climate on local highway networks, the Department has published on gov.uk an independent report on the lessons learned from extreme weather-related emergencies over the period 2015 to 2020.