Common Mistakes When Reporting a Pothole (And How to Get It Fixed Faster)

A pothole can sit outside the same front door for months while reports pile up around it. The difference between a hole that gets filled within a fortnight and one that lingers until the next round of works is rarely luck. It usually comes down to the quality of the first report — whether the person reading it can find the defect, understand the risk, and pass it straight to a gang.

Here are the mistakes that cause reports to stall, and what to do instead.

Why so many reports go nowhere

Councils deal with a constant stream of defect reports. Each one gets logged, assessed against the authority's intervention criteria, then either scheduled for repair or closed because it does not meet the threshold. Reports that stall tend to be missing the same few things: a usable photograph, a location a stranger could find, the right department, or enough detail to triage at all. A report with gaps cannot be assessed, so it sits in a queue while clearer ones move past it.

Mistake one: the photo that proves nothing

The classic is a single shot taken through a windscreen from thirty feet away. It shows tarmac, a wet patch, and nothing else. No one can tell how deep the hole is, which lane it is in, or whether it is on the road or the pavement.

A useful set of photos does three jobs at once:

• A wide shot for context — the road, the junction, a house number, a shopfront, a bus stop. Anything a driver who has never been to your street could use to find the spot.
• A close-up of the defect itself — in focus, in daylight, from directly above if you can manage it.
• Something for scale — a coin, a boot, a tape measure laid across the hole. Depth and width are what usually decide whether a repair is triggered.
• A shot from the direction you were travelling, so it is obvious which side of the road and which lane is affected.

Do not stand in a live carriageway to get the perfect angle. Use zoom from the pavement, or come back when the road is quiet. And never take the photo while driving — you will get a blurry smudge and put yourself at risk.

Mistake two: a location that only makes sense to you

"On the left just past the chip shop" means nothing to someone in a depot three miles away. Give the street name, the nearest house number, the postcode, and which side of the road. If the street has no numbers, pick a landmark that appears on a map — a junction, a school gate, a named bus stop.

Then add the details that people forget:

• Which direction of travel you were heading.
• Whether it is in the carriageway, the gutter, or on the footway.
• Whether it is near a crossing, a cycle lane, a school entrance or a bus route.
• Whether it fills with water, which hides the depth and makes it worse for anyone on two wheels.

Some councils accept what3words references, but not all do, and not every system handles them. Use one as a bonus, never as your only location.

Mistake three: sending it to the wrong people

Who owns the road decides who fixes it. Local councils look after most residential streets, pavements and the majority of local A and B roads. National Highways manages motorways and major A roads in England, with equivalent trunk road bodies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Supermarket car parks, retail parks, hospital grounds and private or unadopted roads belong to the landowner.

Utilities are another common mix-up. Sunken covers, leaking drains, damaged kerbs and inspection chamber surrounds usually belong to the water or utility company, not the highways team. Reporting a wobbly drain cover as a pothole gets it bounced back and wastes a week.

If you are not sure who is responsible, send it to the council anyway and ask them to confirm ownership. They will usually redirect it, and they can sometimes serve notice on a private owner.

Mistake four: one report for twelve potholes

Defects are tracked individually. A single report saying "the whole of Mill Road is a disgrace" gets logged as one item and can be closed with one repair, leaving the rest untouched.

Report the worst two or three separately, each with its own photo and precise location. If a footway defect is also a trip hazard, say so explicitly — pavement inspections often run on a different cycle from the road, and a report that only mentions the carriageway may not trigger the right inspection.

One more thing worth knowing: if a pothole already has a white or yellow painted outline, it has usually been inspected and scheduled. Report it again only if it has got noticeably worse or the paint has worn away, and mention the marking so it can be matched to the existing job.

Mistake five: reporting once and hoping

Always take the reference number and note the date you submitted. If nothing has changed after a few weeks, reply to your confirmation email quoting that reference and asking for the outcome of the inspection. Keep it short and factual: location, reference, date, what you have observed since.

If the defect is genuinely dangerous — a hole deep enough to throw a cyclist, or one in a busy lane where drivers swerve into oncoming traffic — say so plainly and ask for it to be treated as an urgent safety issue. That framing matters more than the size of the hole.

If your vehicle has been damaged or someone has been hurt, keep photographs, receipts and the reference number, and take proper advice before pursuing anything. Liability usually turns on whether the authority inspected and maintained the road to a reasonable standard, which is not a judgement to make on your own.

The two-minute version

Photograph the hole close up and in context, with something for scale. Give the street, number, postcode, side and direction of travel. Send it to the right authority through their official reporting form, not to a social media post — a comment on a Facebook page rarely creates a tracked job. Keep the reference. Follow up once, politely, with the reference in the subject line. That is usually the difference between a report that disappears and a repair that turns up.

Photo: Aiden Tieulie / Pexels