Potholes: analysis reveals Britain's worst cities for potholes - including Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham

New analysis has identified Glasgow as the pothole capital of Britain, with the Scottish city boasting a staggering 11.7 unrepaired potholes for every 1,000 residents. Following closely in second is Edinburgh, with 8.2 potholes per 1,000 people.

England's first place on the top 10 comes at the number three spot, claimed by Hereford and its 7.9 unfixed potholes per 1,000 residents. Wrexham claims the dubious honour in Wales, with 5.9 per 1,000.

Common vehicle problems caused by potholes include punctures, distorted wheels, damaged shock absorbers and broken suspension springs, and they are often formed when water enters cracks in the road surface, then freezes and expands.

The data comes from FixMyStreet, a website where residents can report potholes to councils, and covers areas with at least 100 reports. The reports are categorised as "open" if unresolved or "fixed" if addressed.

Glasgow has seen over 9,700 pothole reports in the past 17 years, and only about a third of them have been repaired. Edinburgh, with less than a quarter of its 5,538 reported potholes fixed since 2007, also faces significant challenges in addressing the issue.

Hereford ranked as the third-worst in the country, tallying 421 potholes for its relatively small population of 53,000. Despite this, it displayed an unusually high rate of addressing half of the reported potholes.

Among the top 10 worst pothole capitals in Britain were Southampton, Wrexham, Stoke-on-Trent, Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, and Swansea.

Wrexham, identified as the worst city in Wales, faced challenges with its council managing to repair only one in four reported potholes in the past 13 years. The city's 135,000 residents continued to contend with almost 800 unrepaired potholes.

Notably, among the top 10 pothole capitals in Britain, Manchester exhibited the lowest fix rate, with just 19 percent of reported road craters being addressed after residents brought them to attention.

Mo Naser, the chief executive of SmartSurvey which analysed the data, said: “One could argue that bigger cities have more issues to attend to, but they also have bigger budgets and more staff to deal with them.

“For instance, Truro is a tiny cathedral city, but the council fixes two in three reported potholes. Why do Bath, Peterborough, Bristol, and Truro, whose populations and filed reports vary so widely, succeed while cities of comparable sizes to each of them struggle?”

The 'Top' 10 pothole hotspots in the UK:

• Glasgow
• Edinburgh
• Hereford
• Southampton
• Wrexham
• Stoke-on-Trent
• Sheffield
• Manchester
• Birmingham
• Swansea

The list of pothole hotspots comes less than a month after new figures showed pothole-related breakdowns reached a five-year high in 2023.

The AA said it received 632,000 call outs to vehicles damaged by road defects last year. That is a 16% increase compared with the previous 12 months, and is the most since 666,000 in 2018 when many roads were damaged by prolonged extreme cold weather from the so-called Beast from the East.

In November, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to tackle “the scourge of potholes” with an extra £8.3 billion of funding over 11 years for local roads maintenance in England using money saved by scrapping HS2 north of Birmingham.

A Department for Transport (DfT) spokesperson said this “decisive action” is “the biggest ever funding increase for local road improvements and enough to resurface over 5,000 miles of roads across the country”.