Potholes

We've been awarded an extra £8.6 million from the Department for Transport to tackle defects across roads in Kent. Read more about our Pothole Blitz.

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.

Report a pothole

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.