Nigel Farage’s election-winning hopes could be dashed by a backlash from voters over potholes, research by The i Paper suggests.
Official figures show a quarter of councils won by Reform last year have red ratings – the worst classification – for local road repairs.
And several other authorities run by Farage’s party are also at the centre of local rows over the state of their roads, the research shows.
Reform said the official figures, collected by the Department for Transport, relate to March to June 2025, meaning the majority of potholes were inherited from previous council administrations, mostly run by the Conservatives, and that their councillors were now tackling the backlog.
But the Department for Transport which published the list in January, says it gives the “current condition of local roads” and is based also on the transparency reports from local authorities detailing what they are doing to fix them.
While local authorities run by all parties have a pot hole problem, it is a particularly thorny issue for Nigel Farage. Although riding high in the national polls, Reform’s leader has admitted a weakness is his party’s lack of experience in government. He has therefore pointed voters to the performance of his local authorities to provide proof of Reform’s ability to govern.
He has also campaigned on potholes, turning up in Staffordshire in June, for example, to fill a pothole with flowers.
Polling experts said the problem could still dog Reform at the ballot box unless their roads improved.
The state of local roads is a key issue on the doorstep, particularly when other cost of living pressures due to the energy crisis caused by the war in Iran are squeezing household budgets, and could sway council seats on polling day.
The councils seized by Farage’s party last May are next up for election in 2029, which is also the scheduled date of the general election when Reform hopes to cause a major upset for the Labour government.
Voters could register their unhappiness in both local and national polls if Reform has not got a grip on its pothole problems, experts said.
Britain’s potholes problem is getting worseThis week the RAC said heavy rain over the winter, causing an “incredible amount of standing water” on roads, was causing a surge in breakdowns due to drivers hitting potholes hidden by puddles.
Long periods of wet weather over recent years has exacerbated Britain’s pothole problem, combined with ageing road infrastructure.
To get to grips with the issue, the Department for Transport has introduced a traffic light system for road maintenance to force councils to improve. Local authorities are scored red, amber and green each for condition, amount spent on repairs and best practice, as well as an overall rating.
And in her Budget in November, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced councils in England would collectively receive £7.3bn in funding over the next three years on road repairs, with 25 per cent of the cash held back if authorities are not fully transparent with how it is spent.
Of the 13 councils given overall red ratings, three are where Reform is in control in majority or minority-run administrations.
The three – Derbyshire, Leicestershire and West Northamptonshire – amount to a quarter of Reform’s total council tally of 12.
This is a higher proportion of councils with red ratings than those run by Labour or Liberal Democrats.
Only the Conservatives have a higher proportion of red rated roads, with five out of their 16 authorities in England.
Other councils run by Reform have amber ratings, meaning there is room for improvement.
MPs’ and residents’ fury over pockmarked roads
In Reform-run Nottinghamshire, Kent, Lancashire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire, where the roads are all classed as amber, local MPs have raised the issue of pockmarked highways during Commons debates.
Steve Yemm, the Labour MP for Mansfield in Notts, told Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs in January that his constituent, Beryl Barrett, had died after falling into an unrepaired pothole, and said there were “literally thousands of potholes” on the county’s roads.
Yemm told The i Paper: “In areas like Mansfield potholes are a daily frustration related to vehicle damage and sometimes a real danger. I raised this in Parliament after the tragic death of one of my constituents following an accident caused by a pothole.
“If councils – including Reform-run ones like mine in Notts County Council – can’t even get the basics right and fix the roads, people will rightly ask what they’re doing with all of the additional money from central government.”
Nottinghamshire has also been the scene of noisy protests outside its county council offices, as local motorists express fury about the state of their roads.
Earlier this month, residents banged pots and pans and waved banners outside County Hall, forcing Reform’s council leader Mick Barton to come out and address the crowd.
Barton and Sam Smith, the Conservative opposition leader, shared an angry exchange about the money spent on potholes, according to a report by the Nottingham Post.
‘Damaged suspension and ripped tyres’
According to the RAC, Derbyshire has among the highest number of potholes in England.
Labour MP for Derby North Catherine Atkinson told the Commons in January the state of roads in the country was “absolutely abysmal”.
In Lancashire, Conservative MP for Fylde Andrew Snowden told parliament last month that his constituents were “getting in touch with me to say that this is the worst they can ever remember them being. In fact, one of the potholes that is sparking quite a few emails to me is a giant one right outside Reform UK’s office in the Fylde constituency, which is becoming a little metaphor for the rocky road that Reform has had since winning control of Lancashire county council”.
And the Lancashire Lead reported that Azhar Ali, the leader of the council’s opposition group of independents and Greens, said local residents were “sick and tired of replacing their damaged suspension [and getting] punctures [and] ripped tyres” and condemned “shoddy workmanship” and “potholes turn into craters” because the repairs were not being done quickly enough.
Reform says it is ‘committed to fixing our highways’
In response, Reform said the DfT data used for the traffic light ratings had been collected between March and June 2025, and the party had only taken control on 1 May.
A Reform spokesman said the figures “expose the failure of previous Conservative and Labour councils to get our local highways services working effectively”, adding: “Despite inheriting some of the worst roads in the country, Reform councils have been committed to fixing our highways. In Derbyshire alone – which we inherited as the pothole capital of England – the Reform administration cleared the entire pothole backlog left for them by the Tories in their first six months.
“Whilst there is always more work to be done, Reform has started the process of reversing decades of managed decline under the Tories and Labour.”
West Northamptonshire council said it welcomed the increased transparency into road condition and the national investment in repairs, and said the data for its red rating relates to early 2025.
In a statement it said “significant progress” had been made since then.
It added: “While we do not believe the overall ‘red’ rating fully reflects the scale, pace and impact of the improvements being delivered locally, we acknowledge the Government’s recognition that many councils are working to address the consequences of historic under-investment in local roads, often across very large and complex networks.
“The data used to inform the ranking is reported regularly to the DfT but due to the way in which the data is collected, it does not reflect the network as it stands today.”
Derbyshire and Leicestershire councils were contacted for comment.
How Reform could pay the price at the ballot box
Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta, said: “Local elections voters still tend to vote along national lines, and that is why Reform may end up doing very, very well in the upcoming set of local elections.
“However, despite that, there will always be an element locally of being judged on your local record, and this may become a thorn in Reform’s side over the coming years, as it often has when the Green Party have led councils.
“If Reform continue to state that all of the issues local areas face, such as potholes, are down to the incompetence of or mismanagement by Conservative and Labour councillors, they will be expected to fix them swiftly and effectively.
“But it’s likely the myriad issues local authorities face are more structural, and councillors of all stripes would struggle to fix these issues.
“Reform risks looking incompetent if they are unable to fix the problems they claim have a very simple solution, and it may not be long before voters lump Reform politicians in the same sorry heap as the Conservative and Labour ones languishing in the polls.”
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is expected to announce fresh measures later this spring to encourage councils to speed up road repairs.
Councils with red ratings are expected to get tougher warnings from the government to improve their local roads and spend their full allocations, with announcements expected in the run-up to the English local elections in May, The i Paper understands.
They will be told they will have to account for why their potholes are not being fixed, but will also be offered support and advice from Whitehall on how to upskill their road maintenance capability, including identifying contractors who offer the best value for money, using AI in CCTV systems to spot potholes and avoiding temporary or inadequate quick fixes for the worst blackspots.
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