Reporting a fault on a highway

18 January 2011

We offer you the ability to report a highways fault 24 hours a day using our online reporting form.

If you think that a situation may be an emergency, please call us immediately on 08458 247 800 to report it to us.

You can use this form to report faults or make requests about a variety of services and highway assets including bridges, drainage and flooding, mobility access, potholes, street lighting , vegetation (trees, hedges and verges), unlicensed or illegal skips, fly posting and advertising and winter maintenance.

Once you have reported a problem, we will quickly assess your call and place it in one of the following categories:

Danger - where we judge the defect is a threat to life and limb, we aim to attend the site and make it safe within 2½ hours of the report being received.
Hazards - where we judge the defect to be a hazard to public safety, we aim to attend the site and fix the fault within 5 working days of the report being received.
Street lights - we will aim to repair streetlights within 7 working days of the report being received. However, if there is a major problem or fault with the mains power supply we will have to call in the local electricity supply company (for example, EDF) but we aim to repair these faults within 30 working days.
Traffic signals - we aim to fix permanent traffic light faults within 4 hours where we judge the repair to be urgent. Any other faults, we aim to repair within 7 working days.
All other problems - we will put all defects or problems into our routine works programme and try to fix a number of faults in a single visit to site.

Making an enquiry

Please note the online reporting form can also be used for making some enquiries and submitting requests for service, for example:

information about specific highway works
requests for new, or to refresh, lines and markings
requests for tourist or event signs
requests for traffic calming
requests for resurfacing.

We aim to reply to your letters and emails as quickly as we can with the information you need, so we will:

aim to acknowledge all letters within 5 working days and provide a full response within 20 working days or an explanation as to why a reply may take longer
aim to acknowledge the receipt of your email within 24 hours and provide a full response within 5 working days or an explanation as to why a reply may take longer.

If you have a general enquiry that cannot be made using the online reporting form you can: