Coventry's potholed roads 'like driving on moon'

4 hours ago

Simon Gilbert,Political Reporter, Coventry and Warwickshireand

Lorna Bailey,Presenter, BBC CWR

News image — Potholes, like this one on Hillmorton Road, Coventry, need to be 4cm in depth before Coventry City Council will repair them - the height of a lego minifigure.

BBC A Lego minifgure stands in a damaged road surface. — Potholes, like this one on Hillmorton Road, Coventry, need to be 4cm in depth before Coventry City Council will repair them - the height of a lego minifigure.

A Coventry driver has said the city's roads are like "driving on the surface of the moon".

Andy Beaufoy from Eastern Green said he suffered damage to his car totalling £120 after hitting a pothole on Coventry Ring Road.

"I was only doing 30mph but I hit it with an almighty thud," he said. "I had to do an emergency spare tyre change in the garage that was just down the road."

His comments came after it emerged the number of potholes in Coventry had increased by 550% during the winter months, according to the city council.

Richard Brown stands in front of a road map. He wars an open collar blue shirt and had a grey goatee beard. — Richard Brown, Labour's cabinet member for finance on Coventry City Council, had said there were only 100 potholes in Coventry

It has emerged there are about 650 potholes in the city as a result of the winter's wet weather.

The figures are much higher than those claimed ahead of the city's annual road repair budget, which was signed off last month.

Richard Brown, Coventry City Council's cabinet member for finance, had told the BBC there were just 100 potholes in the city ahead of pushing through a one-off £2m investment to improve roads and footpaths as well as street cleaning.

A damaged road surface with yellow spray painted markings at the top of the image. — There are believed to be about 650 potholes in Coventry but some "defects", like this worn surface in Bell Green Road, are not always considered to be potholes by the council

Speaking ahead of signing off the council's budget in February, Brown said: "We can normally fix a pothole within one-and-a-half days of when we know about it.

"That's not to say we've actually cleared every pothole. But I think there's something like only 100 that we're working with across Coventry itself.

"But there are issues around, it may not just be a pothole it may be a defect. So sometimes people see a defect in the road surface and think it's a pothole, it's not what we class it."

'Dramatic increase'

But speaking to Breakfast on BBC CWR, Mark O'Connell, strategic lead for Highway Operations at the authority, said those figures were for November 2025. He acknowledged the number had grown and repairs were now taking longer.

He said on Monday: "Pothole inquiries we've had in January and February this year is higher than we had in all of 2025.

"And our numbers from the end of last year to where we are now have dramatically increased.

"What's happened is over the winter the sheer amount of rainfall and wetness we had gets into the road service, starts to break it out and it's not just in Coventry it's an issue, it's across the country."

He also encouraged people to report potholes to the council.

House of Commons Joh nSlinger stands and talks in the House of Commons. He wears a dark blue suit jacket and two tone red / purple tie. — Labour's MP for Rugby John Slinger questioned whether government cash to repair potholes was being spent properly.

Across the border in Warwickshire, Labour MP for Rugby John Slinger has questioned whether local authorities were using money from the Labour government for pothole repair as intended.

Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, he said: "I commend the staff of Warwickshire County Council for filling 718 of the 1,127 potholes reported since the beginning of January, but there are still 409 holes remaining to be filled."

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