Kent’s pothole peril

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Transcript

00:00There's a scourge of motorists on Kent roads. But could potholes be getting worse in the

00:08county because of foreign lorries and tourist traffic heading to European gateways? Most

00:15lorries will keep to the motorways, which are repaired by national highways. But Kent

00:19County Council believes that some of the EU-bound freight ends up on some of the 5,000 miles

00:25of roads they manage, and that's causing them to get worse.

00:29We have a lot of foreign freight coming in, perhaps not contributing in a way that we

00:33would like to the upkeep of our roads, and they are of course damaging them as much as

00:36any other traffic. So I think that is a conversation that we have with government. And as always,

00:40we need to make clear to government, we are not just another county. We're a large county,

00:45one and a half million plus people. That is on the front line when it comes to all of

00:50these vehicles coming in and causing damage. So we need to make the most of that and make

00:53our voices heard at Westminster and Whitehall.

00:56Drivers want to see changes, many saying they've had punctures, wheel damage and suspension

01:01problems. It's really costly because when you look

01:03at the cost of changing a tyre, tyres are not cheap nowadays. Rubber, rubber, the cost

01:07of rubber just keeps on going up. And I think for the last car that happened to me, it cost

01:13what, 300 quid? Worse, 100% worse. And you're constantly

01:20always going down the same roads and nothing's being done about it.

01:24Yeah, me and my daughter, we both had damage to our cars because of potholes. Yeah.

01:29And was that expensive? It was. And we wrote to the council and we

01:33got no help. Latest AA figures show they've been called

01:37to around 10,000 more breakdowns from last year. They say it's common for patrols to

01:42be sent to the same location in Kent. But also, you do have to look at how you

01:48are using that money and are you using it in the most effective way? As I understand,

01:54Kent spends, you know, almost as much on reactive, just patching up roads as they do on the kind

02:02of proactive, the longer term maintenance. And sometimes the patching up is counterproductive.

02:11It's so deep that that pothole reappears every couple of months.

02:16Labour has promised to fix one million more potholes per year. Further details could be

02:21in the budget at the end of the month. But a county council wonders how far that will go,

02:26with freight traffic to the continent set to increase in the coming years.

02:31Gabriel Morris in Maidstone.