UK Transport Minister’s Mini broken by Oxfordshire pothole

Heidi Alexander, who has been the Secretary of State for Transport since November 2024, was driving on the B4437 outside Burford in March when her Mini Cooper his a ‘Moon-like crater’.

She was travelling home with her husband to her Swindon South constituency from a Labour fundraising event.

Photos obtained by The Sun show her green car being loaded on to an AA recovery truck after the incident.

READ MORE: Deep A40 pothole causing carnage say Oxfordshire motorists

She told the newspaper: “I joked to my husband that I thought that the astronauts on Artemis II might have seen a similar-size crater when they were slingshotting around the Moon last week.”

Despite the encounter she insisted that the Labour government was giving record sums to tackle potholes, an issue that has proven contentious in Oxfordshire.

Earlier this year Oxfordshire County Council’s transport chief invited Sir Keir Starmer to come and visit the county’s potholes after the Prime Minister criticised the Lib-Dem led council for its approach.

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

The Prime Minister said the Government had put “a record amount of money into dealing with potholes” and said the county council should be asked “why they’re not using that money”, during a Prime Ministers Questions in February.

He was responding to MP Olly Glover, who represents Didcot and Wantage, after he raised the issue of potholes in parliament and asked why the Government had cut the county council’s overall budget by £24.1 million in three years.

Councillor Andrew Gant, cabinet member for transport management, said the PM’s response was “untrue and unfair” in a letter to Mr Glover.

He also invited the Prime Minister to take a look at the county’s roads for himself.

A pothole on the A40 slip road not far from the one Ms Alexander hit (Image: Fix My Street)

Potholes have been a major issue in Oxfordshire over the winter with a number of reports across the county on FixMyStreet and many people citing significant damage to vehicles.

For instance, near to Burford, where Ms Alexander broke down, there was a deep pothole on a A40 slip road that at one point reportedly damaged eight cars over a single evening in February.

The county council has said it was a winter of “exceptional rainfall” and that it has more than doubled the number of teams working across the county.

READ MORE: Queues as potholes restrict Oxfordshire traffic to 5mph

Oxfordshire has been allocated £34 million to tackle potholes and it was estimated last month that the cost of bringing pothole-plagued local roads in England and Wales up to scratch had risen to a record £18.6 billion.

Under new plans, announced this week by Ms Alexander, English councils risk losing up to a third of their funding to fix potholes if they fail to demonstrate they are working effectively.

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.