What conjures up the arrival of spring for you? Daffodils? April showers? Or the emergence on our roads of potholes?

It’s a perennial problem and one which, for an eye-watering price, we could permanently eliminate. The bigger question, perhaps, is can we afford not to?

Taxi drivers in Kent say the county's roads are in such a terrible state of disrepair, that they're becoming deathtraps for motorists

To give a sense of scale to the problem, it is estimated the roads of England and Wales see a pothole filled, on average, once every 19 seconds.

And according to data published recently by insurance comparison site Go Compare, which compiled Freedom of Information statistics over the past three years, Kent is the 'pothole capital of the UK'.

Last year alone, it says more than 13,500 potholes pockmarked our roads, while between 2018 and 2020, there were reports of 52,425 of the things.

But simply filling in the holes as they emerge is widely seen - by engineers and motorists alike - as akin to "putting a sticking plaster on a gaping wound".

Because a pothole is often a symptom of a wider problem on a stretch of road. One where a temporary solution does nothing to fix the basic integrity of a road’s surface; a surface which is frequently weakened further by the digging of trenches by utility companies.

Not to mention constantly fighting off the damaging influences of the volume of traffic, the weather and even the very ground on which it was first built.

Angry businessman Josh Magill reveals the extent of the pothole problem on the A2

And in a world where so much talk over the last 12 months has been of encouraging us all to cycle more rather than drive, can we realistically be expected to do just that when our roads can become death-traps for those on two wheels?

"The issue of potholes is probably one of our most common themes of letters or emails we get," Jack Cousens, head of road policy at motoring organisation the AA, tells KentOnline. "People keep asking ‘why are our roads in such bad condition?’"

Yet pointing the finger at one guilty party is not as easy as you may imagine. As we will discover, cursing Kent County Council (which maintains the county's road network, with the exception of our motorways and major trunk roads), or for that matter Medway Council, loudly the next time your car bounces in and out of a hole in the road, may not be entirely fair.

Because potholes have become a multi-billion pound dilemma caught up in a complex political web.

To make matters worse, the situation could be set to get even more dire.

According to a recent report by the Asphalt Industry Alliance, based on information obtained from local authorities across England and Wales, it would cost an additional £10.24billion - on top of the current funding levels - to get the nation's roads back into shape. Oh, and that process would take 10 years.

Explains the AA's Jack Cousens: "We should have the ambition to have the safest roads in the world. Roads which are perfectly usable in the heights of summer and depths of winter and during torrential rainfall.

"But that does take a lot of investment. If you were a politician in central government, is turning around and saying we need billions of pounds to tarmac the UK sexy politics, for the want of a better phrase? It's not really.

"People think it's a given the roads are there and they should be maintained. If there's then a big announcement pledging a huge chunk of money just to make them good enough, or just to get them back to where they should be, people will go 'why the hell were you not doing that in the first place'?"

So why is Kent seemingly so hard hit by the problem? The answer is a combination of factors - one of which is often easy to overlook - the geological make-up of the land on which the road is built.

Explains Alan Casson, KCC’s strategic asset manager: "Kent has a variable and challenging geology; this is particularly a concern in areas that have clay soil conditions, such as Herne Bay and Whitstable; in marshy areas, such as Romney Marsh; and areas that are prone to underground voids, such as west Kent.

"In addition, over the last decade we have experienced very wet and cold weather conditions alongside significant volumes of traffic given our position as the gateway to Europe."

It is also worth remembering the county has one of the biggest road networks in England, at around 5,400 miles.

Malcolm Simms is director of the aforementioned Asphalt Industry Alliance - a body which advises local authorities and champions best practice in the use of road maintenance and investment.

He highlights another issue which is relevant for the county.

“The problem with local roads - particularly the rural networks - is that they've evolved over time.

“Once they were just dirt tracks. Over the course of the centuries, stone was laid on top. As technology has come forward, bound layers of concrete and asphalt were added. But the original road itself is centuries old.”

A rising concern is that many roads are simply getting past their use-by date.

Mr Simms explains: "In general in the UK, from an asset management perspective, most A-roads would be assessed on a 60-year design life. That's the entire structure of it - from top to bottom - and aligns with government guidance.

"After it reaches that limit, it should be decommissioned, for want of a better word.

"Within that 60 years, there is an anticipation the top layer, the road's surface, will be maintained and replaced to protect the lower layers of the structure.”

The average life cycle of a road’s surface – the thinnest layer of the three-tier structure which forms the road from the bottom up – is around 20 years. Filling in any gaps which occur doesn’t extend it, it just keeps it from death’s door.

The AA’s Jack Cousens adds: “At the moment you have roads which I call patchwork quilts. Which is where local authorities just patch and run, patch and run - constantly putting a sticking plaster over their infrastructure.

“Whereas what should actually happen, and what we advocate, is to resurface the whole road as its the structural integrity which is important. Having a patchwork quilt doesn't really help because ultimately those patches will fail and you'll have to redo what you've already patched up.

“And that is what riles the motorist.”

"To simplify it,” says the AIA’s Mr Simms on road maintenance, “it's a bit like painting the Forth Bridge - it's a continuous job maintaining it from one end to the other and when you get to the end, you go back and start again."

Its Alarm (Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance) survey was published last month.

It revealed almost a third of roads in England (29%) were rated 'adequate' - which equates to having 5-15 years life left in them. More worryingly, 16% were rated as having less than five years' life left.

Adds Mr Simms: "The authorities set budgets to deal with those so they don't get to zero. It's a case of keeping them just good enough.

"Something we've learnt from motorway construction, which are well designed and generally quite thick due to the volumes of traffic, is that it is possible to design the lower levels to have an infinite life so they don't fail as such.

"Authorities do their best to keep repairing roads and maintain them, but if they don't have the budget to do that, then the potholes form and eventually you will get a bigger structural issue.

"Patching up potholes is really just putting a plaster on a gaping wound. In days gone by, when potholes were forming, engineers - and there were more of them - would take that as a signal of a wider issue with the road and not the problem itself.”

KCC’s Alan Casson elaborates: “The main cause of deterioration to road surfaces is the oxidisation of bitumen [the tar used as the adhesive to the asphalt], which, over time, reduces cohesion of the surface layer.

“There are other contributory factors such as the underlying geology and road use - particularly on roads that have evolved over the years. In addition, whilst most utility companies’ works are to a high standard given our inspection regime, any operation that cuts into an otherwise sound road surface will result in a weaker road after reinstatement.

“Wet and cold weather essentially accelerates the deterioration of a road during the end of its serviceable life.”

The stumbling block to all the best practice and fixing the broader issues, you will not be surprised to learn, lies in funding.

The bulk of KCC's annual budget - as with all local upper tier authorities - comes from a grant from central government - a figure which has been in steady decline over recent years as Whitehall looks to make authorities more self-sufficient.

With much of that funding not ring-fenced, the allocation for roads maintenance - which covers far more than simply the problem of potholes but can prevent them from occurring - can often fall victim to demands elsewhere.

Adds the AA's Jack Cousens: "Roads have fallen pretty much near the bottom of the priority pile.

"If you pitch the position that we could spend this money on people or we spend it on roads - people will probably always win. If it's a case of filling in potholes or keeping open the local library, the library will win because it's more person orientated.

“Additionally, road inspections are not good enough. A motorway is examined once a month, while a residential road is inspected once a year. So that has to be significantly improved.

"Ultimately, the vast bulk of the money comes from central government, and central government as we know is already asking stretched local authorities to manage and maintain things in ways they never deemed possible before. At what point do they say 'enough's enough'?"

KCC says it spends around £15m a year on repairing both potholes and larger patch repairs – designed to prevent their formation in the first place. In addition, it has spent around £40m in each of the last two years on planned road surfacing works.

Its ‘Highways Asset Management Plan’ is a five-year programme covering around 7.5million sq metres of road resurfacing and preservation. It is designed to look ahead and hopefully nip problems in the bud.

But no-one realistically expects that to cover every trouble-spot in the county.

KCC cabinet member for highways and transport, Cllr Michael Payne, explained: “Sometimes quick, temporary fixes have to be used in emergency situations to ensure the road is safe.

“These are then programmed to be revisited for a permanent repair to be undertaken and the majority of the time Kent Highways replace large sections of the road where the defects have formed.

“This work doesn’t preclude people’s help in reporting potholes and so I’d encourage residents to go online and report potholes so we can arrange for them to be filled.”

But the AA says that approach is a sign of where the system is going wrong when it comes to the upkeep of our road network.

Explains its head of road policy, Jack Cousens: “All local authorities are doing now is relying on members of the public to tell them when there's a problem with their infrastructure and that can't be a sustainable way forward.

“Ultimately, it gives the local authority an opt out option, which is 'if we didn't know the pothole was there, how can we be held responsible for it'.

“In my view, that's not an acceptable way to look after your infrastructure. If you're in charge of maintaining it, you should be consistently and constantly monitoring and managing that infrastructure.”

But KCC’s strategic asset manager, Alan Cassons, says it is moving in the right direction.

He explains: “Key to minimising disruption is forward planning, hence the five-year plan. We don’t solely rely on residents reporting potholes as we have an inspection and maintenance programme in place.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Malcolm Simms of the AIA prefers the blame to be aimed higher up the political tree.

He explains: "In general, authorities across the country are doing a really good job with the resources they have. Unfortunately, they aren't sufficient, so they can't achieve the targets they are setting themselves, and they are probably as frustrated as the travelling public as to the condition they are almost forced to leave the roads in. It's not what they strive to achieve.

"But their hands are tied with access to limited funding - and it's inconsistent. It goes up and down every year.

“As they only receive single year budgets in the majority of cases, they can only plan for 12 months. So what they and we are calling for is longer term, consistent investment.

“It's a bit like the Set for Life game on the National Lottery; would you rather have £3m today and you have to spend it now, or £100,000 a year for 30 years, because at least then you can plan with the income you know you will get.”

Whitehall, meanwhile, helps hand out those sticking plasters with its annual pothole fund – additional money dished out to local authorities to patch the dreaded holes we become so familiar with trying to avoid.

A spokesman for the Department for Transport said: “The government has allocated £1.125bn to local road maintenance, ensuring that thousands of local roads are made safer and easier to use.

“The £500m dedicated to the potholes fund allows the equivalent of 10 million potholes to be rectified by local councils.”

But there’s another problem looming too.

The government has long relied on vehicle excise duty – car tax - helping fund the coffers of its road improvements fund. But with the ban on new petrol and diesel cars less than 10 years away – it’s due to be in force by 2030 – it faces a dilemma.

Currently, electric vehicles are exempt from paying car tax in order to encourage take-up of the environmentally-friendly alternative to the combustion engine.

Explains the AA’s Jack Cousens: “The issue of what replaces vehicle excise duty is the elephant in the room.

“Is it going to be some form of roads pricing, which in turn helps fund road maintenance? Is it going to be pay by the mile? Whatever the solution is, that should be having a fundamental role in how do we maintain, manage and improve the road infrastructure.”

Road pricing is a long-discussed school of thought which proposes different charges for different road use.

Explains Mr Cousens: “Do you charge people for using motorways, for using A-roads, for using local roads? Do you charge a fixed amount for driving 5,000 miles a year and a different amount for 10,000?

“The problem is it's a highly contentious political decision. And no politician wants to be the one who says we're going to do it.

The problem is it's a highly contentious political decision. And no politician wants to be the one who says we're going to do it.

“Whilst I can understand it to a certain extent, politicians are very worried about the here and now response, as opposed to the long-term perspective.

“To use the parlance of [TV comedy show] Yes Minister, someone's going to have to be courageous at some stage.”

And with Chancellor Rishi Sunak currently trying to work out just how to repay the billions upon billions of pounds the country has borrowed to ease the nation through the Covid crisis, the prospect of a major roads investment seems as likely as a Sunday drive not including that sinking feeling you get as you hit a pothole.

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