The number of potholes reported to Monmouthshire Council increased by more than 550 per cent in nine years, as repairs reduced and spending increased. The reports have risen from 669 in 2017 to 4,360 so far in 2026.

The Abergavenny Chronicle reports that in the first three months of this financial year there were already been 838 requests to fix potholes, and while the council has repaired 471, that left just under half waiting for a repair over the same period.

Completed repairs fell to 810, in 2021/22, when Covid era lockdowns were still partly in place, and 1,010 in 2022, though spending on pothole repairs grew from £608,000 in 2017/18 to a high of £1.174 million in 2024/25 after the Welsh Government made additional funding for road resurfacing available.

Spending is described as “best guestimates” for all temporary carriageway repairs, as specific financial data isn’t kept on reported pothole repairs.

The figures released by Monmouthshire Council cover every year from 2017/18 to the 2025/26 financial year while it has provided figures for the first quarter of the current financial year covering April to June.

Details on the average number of days it takes the authority to repair a pothole, after receiving a report, have also been supplied and showed that has increased from 10.5 days, when the figure was first recorded in 2019/20, to 18.7 days last year.

The average number of days between a report and repair in the current year is 20.4, but the council has cautioned lengthening repair times over time may reflect it is using more, and different, repair options that are planned rather than reactive.

The full figures cover how many pothole service requests the council received, how many were repaired, with the figures for 2017/18 and 2018/19 higher than requests, indicating proactive repairs were being carried out before complaints were made, how much was spent filling potholes and the average time between report and repair.

(Picture: Highways News)