Staffordshire pothole crews notch up record month of repairs

There’s some encouraging news for anyone who spends their days dodging the occasional crater on Burton’s roads: highways crews have just recorded their busiest month yet for pothole repairs.

Staffordshire County Council says its teams repaired 5,067 road defects across the county during September – more than double the 2,498 repaired during the same month last year.

It is the first time crews have topped 5,000 repairs in a single month, with roads in and around Burton among those covered by the county council’s highways network.

The bumper September puts the council on course towards its target of repairing 40,000 potholes by April 2027, as part of a wider effort to improve road conditions and tackle the backlog of repairs.

Good weather during September helped crews get through more work, but the council says different repair techniques are also speeding things up.

These include velocity patching, which allows suitable potholes to be cleaned, sealed and filled with stone and bitumen in one operation, and screeding, which can tackle several defects across a larger section of road.

In other words, rather than playing an endless game of pothole whack-a-mole, crews can deal with several problems at once where conditions allow.

Councillor Peter Mason, Staffordshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Strategic Highways, said:

“Our crews worked extremely hard throughout September. These figures show what can be achieved through hard work, new ideas and making the most of every opportunity.

“Repairing more than 5,000 potholes in one month is a major achievement. It is more than twice the number we repaired in September last year. The good weather helped, but our highways teams also worked very hard to improve roads across Staffordshire.

“We will keep working to improve. Residents have told us that better roads are a priority, and we are making good progress towards our target of repairing 40,000 potholes by April 2027. This work is also helping to reduce the wider backlog of repairs that has built up over many years.”

The work forms part of Staffordshire County Council’s wider highways improvement programme, which aims to carry out more repairs, tackle problems earlier and use different methods to reduce disruption.

And while the impressive 5,067 figure covers the whole of Staffordshire rather than Burton alone, local roads maintained by the county council form part of that programme – so Burton motorists should be seeing their share of the repair work too.

Residents who spot a pothole or another problem on a county-maintained road can report it through Staffordshire County Council’s online highways reporting service.

Five thousand repairs in a month certainly won’t make every pothole disappear overnight, but it’s a fairly sizeable step in the right direction – preferably without any bumps along the way.