Once upon a time Kevin Lynes, a driving instructor based in Lincolnshire, had to fix the tracking on his car once every two years. These days, he has to change it every six months – because, he says, of the appalling state of Lincolnshire’s roads.
“It’s getting expensive,” he says.
Kevin, 47, is just one of thousand of people being affected by the rising number of potholes which drivers say are scarring the region’s roads.
In the last three years, more than £230,000 has been paid out by the Lincolnshire County Council on pothole compensation claims. In that time, the authority – which is responsible for the region’s roads – has had almost 5,000 claims lodged against it for pothole damage.
“Some of them I’ve seen I could have a bath in” says Kevin. “If you find a road without one – it’s like, wow. It’s surprising”
He remembers a student once pointing out how lovely a new resurfaced road was. “I said, ‘No, it should be like this’,” he says. “Local authorities talk about [improvements] but the public don’t see any.”
Roads are undoubtedly a growing concern for people across the UK. The RAC say that there has been a 35 per cent decline in real-terms money spent on the maintenance of UK roads since 2017-18.
While Road Safety GB has posted figures saying that 4,894 miles of major roads underwent improvements in 2023-24, many drivers – including Kevin – feel work is often inadequate. “Its like putting a plaster on a big wound,” he says
“If I had a crystal ball and I looked into it 40 years it will still be bad,” he says. “We will still be driving around on crumbly roads”
The issue is being exacerbated, experts say, by more road-users and heavier vehicles – with bigger potholes appearing with greater frequency.
Greg Carter, a technical specialist on public affairs policy and polling for the AA, said that there has been an average of 49,000 pothole-related incidents in the UK in 2025. In April alone, there were 53,700 such incidents.
“I’ve seen vehicles with structural damage,” he says. “They’ve hit the pothole so hard that damage was done to the chassis of the car. Depth and diameter are the real killers.”
This is because, when cars go into a particularly egregious pothole, the wheels end up using the wall of the pothole to get out – causing pinch punctures.
What cases such large holes? Often, says Greg, they are created by roadworks being covered over poorly with fissures then letting in water which breaks down the seam between the original road and then replaced road, causing the surface to come away.
For people like Kevin – and thousands of others – it remains a cause of huge frustration. It needs, he says, more joined up policies to combat the issue.
Lincoln County Council declined to comment.
