To report a pothole, please visit the Street Doctor who deal with all issues here.
Northamptonshire Highways are responsible for potholes. To see how they prioritise pot holes, what they regard as a pot hole, and the timescale for repairing pot holes, please click here.
General Information concerning pot holes from Northamptonshire Highways:
For a pothole to be considered a safety defect it has to be at least 40mm deep but this is on our busiest roads. For more local roads, our intervention levels would start at a depth of 50mm.
Not all defects therefore will be classed as safety defects since they will not be of sufficient severity to warrant action at present. This does not mean that there are no defects present.
Although this may sometimes give the impression that we are ignoring problems, we have to prioritise our limited maintenance funding and cannot fix all defects reported to us.
The response times will vary and be risk based dependent upon the type of road, its location and depth. These will be then be categorised depending on the risk they pose to the public.
The Highways Inspection officer, using their judgement, carry out the categorisation of a pothole and a risk based approach based on their training and experience when the defect is identified.
The category determines the speed of action required to repair the pothole. In some cases, this means a pothole might only be dealt with when routine maintenance is again carried out on that stretch of road.
We have five response times for repair:
- Emergency – response within two hours
- Priority 1 – response within 24 hours
- Priority 2 – response within 7 calendar days
- Priority 3 – response within 28 calendar days
- Priority 4 – response within 26 calendar weeks
For the busiest roads the worst safety defects (Priority 1) our response time is 24 hours and for other safety defects (Priority 2) it is currently up to 7 calendar days.
For more local roads our response time for the worst safety defects is up to 7 calendar days or 28 calendar days and for other safety defects is up to 26 calendar weeks, dependent upon the categorisation of the road.
In practice most repairs are completed sooner than this in around 2-3 days for Priority 2 defects.