Delivering Regeneration: How collaborative contracts are transforming place-making
Discover how collaborative contracting is helping councils deliver regeneration more effectively with this free special report from LocalGov and NEC Contracts.
Devon County Council calls for volunteers to fill in potholes
5/22/2026 Devon County Council is calling for more volunteers to join its community road warden scheme as it marks a decade since the initiative was rolled out. |
Bodycams rolled out to support safety of Staffordshire road workers
5/1/2026 Staffordshire County Council’s highways crews have been equipped with bodycams to help protect them from threatening behaviour. |
Kent CC bids for over £100m to fix two major road schemes
5/1/2026 Kent County Council has submitted bids to the Government's Structures Fund seeking more than £100m to address critical issues on two key roads in the county. |
Council threatens legal action over £20m roads funding row
4/13/2026 North Yorkshire Council has threatened to take legal action against York and North Yorkshire mayor David Skaith over a dispute about highways funding. |
Oxfordshire issues legal warning over unauthorised flags
3/31/2026 Oxfordshire CC has issued a formal legal notice to the group ‘Raise the Colours’ following the unauthorised installation of flags on highway infrastructure. |
Mayor plans to double pothole repair funding
2/6/2026 Mayor Richard Parker has announced plans to double funding for pothole repairs and road resurfacing across the West Midlands. |
Local roads to see boost from £315m highways contract
2/3/2026 Three councils have awarded a £315m highways maintenance contract to an international infrastructure group. |
Pothole Pressures: Refining road maintenance ratings
1/22/2026 Andrew Cook, ADEPT, responds to the Department for Transport’s publication of its new Red, Amber, Green (RAG) ratings on council road maintenance performance. |
National Pothole Day: Focusing minds on lasting road repairs
1/14/2026 As National Pothole Day highlights road damage, a partnership of motoring and transport groups is urging councils to rethink how potholes are fixed. |
Pothole payouts reveal postcode lottery for drivers
1/5/2026 Motorists seeking compensation for pothole damage face wildly different outcomes depending on where they live, new figures reveal. |
Council workers have started to 'normalise abuse' from residents
12/18/2025 Local authority workers are warning that abuse from residents is so common they are now coming to work expecting to be shouted at. |
Value of new homes at risk due to 100-mile pylon plan, warns council
12/16/2025 Essex County Council is concerned the value of a 4,000 new home development in its area could be hit by National Grid plans to install 100 miles of pylons close by. |
Councils urged to step up as pothole breakdowns soar
10/21/2025 Councils face renewed pressure to maintain roads as new RAC figures reveal a 25% rise in pothole-related breakdowns over the summer compared to last year. |
Essex CC wows with road resurfacing results
10/15/2025 Essex County Council’s use of graphene-enhanced asphalt has produced ‘very encouraging’ results. |
Council proposes £100m framework to enhance public spaces
10/1/2025 Herefordshire Council has unveiled plans for a £100m Highways and Public Realm Schemes Framework aimed at upgrading infrastructure and public spaces. |
Call for mandatory pothole training for councils
9/8/2025 The RAC and RSTA have called on the Government to mandate training for councils that fail to carry out preventative road maintenance. |
Pothole Claims: What Councils Need to Know
8/18/2025 Councils face growing pothole claims. Georgia Milton of DWF highlights how strong inspections and AI tools can help balance legal duties, budgets and safety. |
Unauthorised flags endanger motorists, council warns
8/15/2025 Birmingham City Council is removing unauthorised flags from lampposts as part of a drive to improve safety in the city for motorists and pedestrians. |
Give councils new powers over street works, MPs say
7/4/2025 Local authorities should be given new powers to limit the disruption caused by street works, overseen by a national 'street works commissioner', MPs say. |
Mr Pothole: Fix our roads before another life is lost
6/10/2025 Britain’s roads are in crisis – and no one knows that better than Mark Morrell, aka Mr Pothole. LocalGov reports. |
How to Fix Local Roads: Sustainable Road Maintenance Solutions for Local Government
6/6/2025 Explore expert insights on sustainable road maintenance and pothole repair, and learn how local government can fix the road network with proactive strategies. |
Highway Maintenance Budgets: The Long View
5/23/2025 Mark Stevens, ADEPT, talks about local authority highway maintenance budgets, looking at how they have been impacted over the years by funding cuts. |
West Midlands councils benefit from £12m pothole boost
5/13/2025 Six local authorities in the West Midlands are due to receive £12m of funding to help resurface roads and repair up to 132,000 potholes. |
Pothole breakdowns jump 20%
4/23/2025 Pothole-related breakdowns have increased by nearly 20% compared to the same period last year, according to the RAC. |
RAC: Only 3% of council roads maintained last year
4/8/2025 Just 3% of England’s council-run road network received any form of road maintenance during the last financial year, Government data has revealed. |
Godstone sinkhole residents able to return home
3/27/2025 Most of the residents of a Surrey village affected by a huge sinkhole are now able to return to their homes, the council has confirmed. |
Envirobed® CD534: The benchmark for bedding mortars since 2005
3/24/2025 Since its introduction in 2005, Envirobed® CD534 high performance bedding mortar has established itself as the gold standard of manhole reinstatements. |
PM tells councils to ‘get on with the job’ of fixing potholes
3/24/2025 Councils will be required to publish progress reports on what they are doing to tackle potholes if they are to access £1.6bn of highway maintenance funding. |
Potholes: Treating the illness not just the symptom
3/17/2025 With the publication of the ALARM survey, chair of the Asphalt Industry Alliance, David Giles, talks to LocalGov about investing in local roads. |
ALARM: Pothole repairs backlog hits £17bn
3/17/2025 Council chiefs have repeated their call for long-term funding for road maintenance as the ALARM survey reveals the pothole repairs backlog has reached £17bn. |
Lancashire councillors agree £28m for pothole repairs
3/10/2025 Lancashire councillors have earmarked nearly £28m to repair potholes as part of a larger investment in the county’s highways infrastructure over the next year. |
DfT throws Norfolk – and Shropshire – a lifeline
3/5/2025 The Department for Transport (DfT) has said it will not ask Norfolk County Council to return £33m funding towards its shelved £274m link road. |
Zurich calls for more cash to improve local road safety
3/4/2025 A major council insurer has called for increased funding for local authority road maintenance and more flexibility when spending it. |
National Pothole Day founder announces retirement
1/15/2025 The UK’s leading anti-pothole campaigner has announced his retirement after 12 years urging Westminster to do more to improve roads. |
'Carbon bomb' warning adds to relief road woes
12/24/2024 Shropshire has shrugged off an estimate of the carbon impact of a road scheme by increasing the budget and timescale for its pledge to offset emissions. |
The Bumpy Road Ahead: Labour’s great pothole challenge
12/17/2024 David Giles, chair of the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA), discusses the state of the local road system and what Labour should do to help drive improvements. |
DfT takes Network North £8.3bn off the table
12/2/2024 Department for Transport officials have made clear that councils can no longer count on the previous Government’s pledge of an extra £8.3bn for highways. |
Major Road Network identified as 'road safety priority'
11/26/2024 The crash rate on major local authority roads in England is four times that on National Highways’ strategic road network (SRN), a new report has found. |
Jail warning for Welsh residents who reserved parking spots
11/1/2024 A Welsh council has warned residents of a street near Aberystwyth that they could face almost a year in prison for reserving parking spaces with cones. |
Unlocking supply chain potential to deliver net zero
10/29/2024 Cllr Paul Dimoldenberg, Westminster City Council, discusses how councils can reach sustainability goals through collaboration with supply chains. |
Workers face abuse over road repairs
10/18/2024 Staff and contractors working to maintain roads in West Sussex have faced escalating levels of abuse in recent months, the council has reported. |
Pothole-related breakdowns jump by 10,000
10/7/2024 The number of pothole-related breakdowns has increased by 10,000 compared to last year, according to the AA Pothole Index. |
Croydon splashes £12.5m on highways
8/15/2024 Croydon Council’s executive mayor has approved a £12.5m capital programme for the borough’s highway infrastructure for 2024-25, as well as a new five-year Highway Asset Management Strategy. |
Potholes: What Labour should do to fix local roads
7/23/2024 Campaigner Mark Morrell, known in the media as Mr Pothole, sets out what the new government should do to fix the local road system. |
Government failing to track pothole funding, auditors warn
7/23/2024 The Government does not know whether the funding it allocates to councils to fix the pothole-riddled road system is being used effectively, auditors warn. |
Highway leaders warn of ‘roadwork gridlock’
7/15/2024 Nearly two thirds of local highway authority (LHA) leaders believe that we are headed for a road and street work crisis by 2030, new research has revealed. |
Lib Dem £300m pothole pledge ‘won’t scratch the surface’
6/20/2024 The Liberal Democrats have committed to spending £300m over the next Parliament to fill 1.2 million potholes a year. |
Labour pledges to fix one million potholes
6/12/2024 One million potholes a year will be fixed if Labour are elected on 4 July, the shadow transport secretary says. |
Councils bring in over £127m in bus lane fines
6/7/2024 Local authorities in England brought in a total of £127.3m in revenue from bus lane fines in 2022/23, according to the AA. |
RAC issues safety warning over obscured signs
6/7/2024 More than half of motorists say obscured signs are a frequent occurrence on their journeys, according to a survey by the RAC. |
RAC: Councils take ‘wildly differing approaches’ to potholes
5/23/2024 Local authorities take very different approaches to deciding whether potholes get fixed, which means many go unrepaired, say RAC and Channel 4’s Dispatches. |
ADEPT releases new guidance on commuted sums
5/21/2024 Local place directors have issued new guidance on charging developers for future asset maintenance under the commuted sums system. |
LGA launches attack on DfT over traffic fine surplus plans
5/17/2024 Council bosses have hit back at the Department for Transport (DfT) over plans to restrict their ability to generate surpluses from traffic contraventions. |
Councils given extra time on signals plans
5/15/2024 The Government has given English highway authorities an extra month to set out what they plan to do with their share of £50m for upgrading traffic signals. |
Devon CC to invest £12m in pothole and drainage works
5/13/2024 A new multi-million-pound investment in repairing potholes and boosting road drainage has been agreed by Devon council members. |
Council invests emergency £5m to tackle ‘potholes menace’
5/13/2024 Lancashire County Council has announced an emergency £5m to deal with the ‘potholes menace’ ruining the county’s roads. |
Potholes cost economy over £14bn a year
4/29/2024 The poor state of England’s pothole-riddled road system is costing £14.4bn a year in economic damage, new research has revealed. |
Avatar director James Cameron backs studio plans
4/24/2024 Oscar winning film director James Cameron has thrown his weight behind proposals for a new film studio in west of London. |
RAC: Drivers ‘dodged the pothole bullet’
4/23/2024 Vehicle owners ‘dodged the pothole bullet’ in what is normally the worst three months of the year for breakdowns, according to the RAC. |
Auditors warned over relief road 'iceberg'
4/19/2024 A councillor has asked Shropshire Council’s external auditor to investigate concerns the North West Relief Road will 'completely bankrupt the council'. |
Councils publish pothole battle plans
4/10/2024 Local authorities have published which pothole-stricken roads will benefit from the first tranche of an over £8bn package of reallocated HS2 funding. |
Council contractor apologises after painting over Zephaniah mural
4/8/2024 A council contractor has apologized after painting over a mural of the late poet and Peaky Blinders star Benjamin Zephaniah in central Birmingham. |
Oxfordshire signs first scheme under new 'brownfield fund'
3/28/2024 Oxfordshire County Council is the first local authority to secure project funding through Homes England's Brownfield, Infrastructure and Land (BIL) Fund. |
UltraCrete partners with Salford City College
3/27/2024 A new UltraCrete and Salford City College Group partnership will see Highways Maintenance Skilled Operative Apprenticeship students become UCARS Accredited. |
VolkerFitzpatrick wins £38m Kent viaduct project
3/26/2024 Kent County Council has appointed VolkerFitzpatrick to design and build a highway crossing over a rail line and river near Canterbury. |
UltraCrete improving road safety near Shrewsbury
2/26/2024 UltraCrete has joined forces with Highway Workforce to repair and replace a failed carriageway frame and cover on a busy road near Shrewsbury. |
Councils 'have tightened pothole payout criteria'
2/5/2024 Compensation paid by councils for damage caused by potholes has fallen by more than a half, with some giving out ‘next to nothing’. |
Hants seeks to avoid cost risk on £125m scheme
2/2/2024 Hampshire County Council is facing a funding gap on the A326 North Waterside Improvements scheme, if cost increases go beyond a current estimate of £125m. |
Second council U-turns on pesticide use
2/1/2024 Cambridgeshire County Council has agreed to reintroduce chemical weed killer, following Brighton's recent call to recommence pesticide treatment. |
Velocity’s low carbon interventions help prevent and repair potholes
1/11/2024 With National Pothole Day upon us once more, highways maintenance specialists Velocity discuss their innovative spray-injection patching technique. |
Potholes: the drivers’ biggest pain
1/10/2024 Jack Cousens, head of roads policy at the AA, discusses the scourge of potholes and what councils should do to fix the local road network. |
Pothole claims up record 40%, insurer reveals
1/9/2024 The number of pothole-related claims increased by a record 40% last year when compared to 2022, the latest data from Admiral Car Insurance has revealed. |
Kent slammed by councillors over ‘last-minute’ repairs deal
1/5/2024 A extension to Kent CC's highways term maintenance contract with Amey has been criticised as an unacceptable 'last-minute approach to a critical service'. |
Parking meters face disruption from 2G switch off
12/18/2023 Parking meters, alarm systems and telecare devices risk facing disruption when 2G and 3G mobile networks are switched off, council chiefs warn. |
Live Labs Centre of Excellence open for business
12/8/2023 An £8.5m Government-funded research project into building and maintaining roads with low-carbon and recycled materials now open for submissions. |
Brum keeps shtum over funding axe reasons
12/6/2023 Birmingham CC has received a document setting out ministers’ reasons for pulling funding from its £2.7bn highways PFI contract but has refused to disclose it. |
£8bn of HS2 savings to be spent on ending pothole ‘blight’
11/17/2023 Transport secretary Mark Harper has confirmed the allocations of an £8.3bn plan to resurface England’s pothole-marked roads, set out in the wake of HS2 cuts. |
AA seeks new pothole cash as councils face cut
10/30/2023 Councils ‘desperately need’ more highway maintenance funding to address the deteriorating condition of local roads, the AA has said after its worst September fixing ‘pothole-related’ breakdowns for five years. |
Oflog moves to expand remit
10/30/2023 The new Office for Local Government (Oflog) watchdog has proposed to widen its scope to five new service areas. |
Council's failure to fix pothole blamed for man’s death
10/17/2023 A man died after falling from his bike when it entered a crack in the road that had been identified to Lancashire County Council, a coroner has found. |
Exclusive: DfT drops self-assessment process
10/10/2023 The Department for Transport has ended the highways self-assessment process, removing the incentive element of local maintenance capital funding. |
No dates for HS2 pothole cash
10/5/2023 The Government has admitted it does not have a timescale for the billions of pounds for road resurfacing that it announced after the decision to curtail HS2. |
Greening Up: why, where and how
10/3/2023 Nicholas Boys Smith, director of Create Streets, sets out how local councils can improve the level of urban greenery and why they should. |
Road conditions add flood risk to pothole ‘crisis’
9/27/2023 English councils received hundreds of compensation claims for flood damage in recent years as they struggled to maintain roadside drainage, according to study. |
Street Manager limitations cost councils millions
9/8/2023 The Local Government Association has released a report it buried three years ago covering the financial impact of the Government's Street Manager software. |
Wet July sees rise in pothole-related breakdowns
8/21/2023 This year is set to be one of the worst on record for damage caused by potholes, according to the AA, after July saw pothole-related breakdowns up a fifth. |
The great pothole repair failure
8/16/2023 The UK has fallen far behind other countries when it comes to funding pothole repairs. Asphalt Industry Alliance's Rick Green discusses what needs to be done. |
Councils pay out £11m in pothole-related compensation
7/24/2023 Over the past four years councils have paid out more than £11m to drivers who successfully claimed their vehicles had been damaged by potholes, RAC reveals. |
Guidance on new road condition surveys pushed back
7/7/2023 The Department of Transport's (DfT) guidance on the new regime for local authority road condition surveys is delayed until next summer, a DfT official says. |
Drivers face ‘pothole postcode lottery’, FoI reveals
4/17/2023 Some councils in England are taking over a month on average to fix potholes once they have been reported, a freedom of information (FoI) request has revealed. |
High concentration of potholes in North, survey finds
4/12/2023 Half of the 20 councils in England found to have the highest concentration of reported potholes are in the North, according to a new survey. |
Clampdown on utility companies leaving potholes
3/31/2023 Reduced traffic congestion has been promised by Government as a result of a clampdown on utility companies leaving potholes after carrying out street works. |
Council chiefs call for £130m to fix potholes
3/10/2023 The Government spent 31 times more maintaining motorways and major highways last year than funding councils to repair pothole-ridden local roads, study finds. |
Councils forced to axe road improvement schemes
3/10/2023 Councils are planning to axe millions of pounds of road improvements because of rising costs and lack of funds, according to new research. |
Lancashire County Council is set to pass its first £1bn budget
2/10/2023 Members have been told that the current financial outlook was ‘generally positive thanks to careful management’. |
Barnet Council ‘insources’ services after decade-long campaign
2/1/2023 More than 300 staff in Barnet are to be transferred back to council employment after a decade-long union campaign. |
EV charging: An alternative strategy
12/6/2022 From earning money to making use of wind power, Colin Townend outlines the benefits of overnight home charging. |
Council to bid for new traffic enforcement powers
11/15/2022 Sheffield Council is to apply to the Government for new traffic enforcement powers to stop drivers making illegal manoeuvres. |
Exclusive: Council interventions could remove one billion miles of car journeys each week
11/15/2022 Councils could remove one billion miles of car journeys from our roads each week by taking the right policy and funding measures, new research has revealed today. |
RAC slams councils over pothole repair quality
11/11/2022 Six in 10 drivers believe the condition of the local roads they use regularly is worse than a year ago, with almost as many (55%) saying the standard of pothole repairs is ‘poor’, according to the latest RAC annual survey. |
