Oxfordshire potholes backlog runs into the thousands

Oxfordshire County Council has revealed 24,330 repairs have been completed while 4,725 are still waiting attention.

Between February 20 and April 19, a total of 13,760 potholes were fixed by repair teams with the rest being dragon patcher repairs.

But reports of potholes continue to pour in, with 1,105 made last week alone, according to the council’s online platform, Fix My Street.

There are 4,689 ‘open’ pothole reports on the site, meaning reports that have been logged by the public and have not been seen by the council yet.

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However, more than 80,000 potholes remain ‘closed’ on the council website. These are potholes that have been logged and reported to the council and are now under investigation.

A breakdown of the repairs over eight weeks shows 1,798 potholes were mended in Cherwell, 1,304 in the west of Oxfordshire district, 606 in the city centre, 2,815 in the south of Oxfordshire, and 1,305 in Vale of White Horse.

RAC research found Oxfordshire County Council had 488 claims made against it in 2021 and 1,941 in 2024, a 297 per cent increase in three years.

This uptick in reports and claims is not without reason, with the A40 and London Road eastbound carriageways, Bedford Street, Beaumont Street, and a M40 roundabout being brandished by the public as “dangerous” due to recurring deep potholes.

Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, whose vehicle was towed after hitting a pothole on B4437 outside Burford, and a scooter rider, George Balkwill, who was hospitalised after hitting a pothole in Oxford’s Cowley district in February.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander (Image: Yui Mok/PA)

English councils risk losing up to a third of their funding to fix potholes if they fail to demonstrate they are working effectively, the Department for Transport announced this week.

Some £525 million of the £1.6 billion funding for local roads maintenance in the 2026/27 financial year will be held back unless authorities prove they are spending the money appropriately.

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For Oxfordshire, this amounts to a significant sum, considering the county has been allocated £34 million for pothole repairs this year.

A looming threat as the national cost to bring pothole-riddled roads up to standard has reportedly risen to a record £18.6 billion.

A pothole on the Southern Bypass (Image: FixMyStreet)

Oxfordshire County Council has declared plans to resurface more than one million square metres of road by late June 2026.

The council has utilised special repair teams, dragon patcher repairs and bobcat patching machines to fix the counties potholes.

Dragon patcher repairs are specialised machines that heat the road, bond the material, and seal the pothole.

Bobcat patching machines are specialised equipment that remove large areas of the road, leaving teams to complete the repairs.