Potholes
Following the wet and sub zero weather of winter, we have seen an unprecedented increase in potholes, with 5 times the usual level of enquiries from the public. We are concentrating our resources on these issues and are working to resolve them as quickly as possible. Please bear with us during this busy time and report non-emergency issues online.
You can let us know about any potholes via our online reporting tool, which will help us schedule repairs. You can also track the progress of an existing problem reported to us.
Contact National Highways for enquiries about motorways or trunk roads in Kent as we are not responsible for these.
Winter update
Winter weather conditions are taking their toll on roads up and down the country, causing difficulties for road users. The recent winter weather has affected road surfaces across Kent, which has led to a surge in the number of potholes and road defects reported to us.
Since December, we’ve received 5 times the usual number of reports so crews are working days, evenings and weekends to make repairs and prioritising those that need to be made safe. While we tackle this, it means that it will unfortunately take us longer than our usual published timescales for routine, non-urgent problems.
14,000
potholes have been repaired
68,414
square metres of road has been patched
Repairing potholes
Our professional highway teams work all year round to identify and repair potholes on our road network.
Watch our video to hear from Alan Casson, our Strategic Asset Manager, about how they work.
How we repair potholes
We regularly check Kent's roads and pavements for potholes and other defects. When we find a problem, we log it for repair. Busy routes are inspected frequently but quieter routes are inspected less often.
Reported potholes that do not meet intervention levels are not forgotten and can be recorded on our system for possible future works. We continue to check the road condition in planned safety inspections to ensure that they have not worsened to the point where they now a pose a hazard to road users.
We prioritise potholes according to how unsafe they're making the road. Not all potholes are a priority, but we do aim to fix all that are identified.
You can report non-urgent issues online.
We aim to make a permanent, quality repair by cutting out a small section of the road around the hole, clearing out the old material and filling it with new tarmac. If a road has lots of potholes we may need to complete a larger patch or resurface the whole section.
For emergency potholes, we sometimes make an instant repair by quickly filling the hole. This is to make the road safe straight away whilst we schedule a full permanent repair to prevent potholes from forming in the future.
Repairing all potholes at the same time regardless of whether they are an immediate safety issue or not would require considerably more resources and money. Reactive maintenance is expensive compared to planned maintenance and it does not provide best value for money.
We are working with our contractors to find quicker and more efficient ways to fill in potholes.
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A video to show how we fix single potholes.
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A video to show how we fix larger areas of road.
To make repairs we often need to close the road, or parts of it, to keep road users and our crews safe.
We will always do our best to keep disruption to a minimum and will notify the local community as far in advance as possible if works are likely to cause any disruption to travel.
You can check planned road closures online. However, if emergency repairs are needed or if the repairs are to a minor road it isn’t always possible for us to publish the details in advance.