Potholes have, in recent years particularly, become an annual news event all in themselves. Every year, the councils and highways authorities responsible for the upkeep of Britain’s roads plead with central government to release more funding to maintain an ever worsening road infrastructure.
The problem is, without significant (and we mean in the multi billions of pounds) additional funding, the road infrastructure in the UK will never be in a sufficient state of repair to not require an ever increasing budget.
An analogy which captures the problem quite nicely is that of trying to fill a leaky bucket with water using a sieve to bail water from a puddle. The holes are too big, too great in number and cover too great an area to ever manage to fill the bucket. The budget is too small, the road condition too poor, the number of potholes too great.
This does seem to be a very British problem, or perhaps it’s just that we are more likely to talk about it in the same typically British way that we talk about the weather. But other European countries, with similarly changeable weather systems, do not seem to suffer the same issues. Do they invest more in their maintenance of roads, is it that they invest more in their construction or is it that they are simply not subjected to anywhere near the same volumes of traffic. Perhaps it is a combination of all of these things.
The worrying thing is that as the pothole problem worsens (and it is now at the stage that we actually have a national ‘pothole day’ to raise awareness of the issue and lobby for additional funding), the frequency of pothole related insurance claims so rises too. Cars suffering damage as a result of potholes, pushbikes suffering punctures, pedestrians claiming for personal injuries sustained as a result of tripping in potholes and even at worst, significant injuries caused as a result of pothole related crashes – these are all real cost risks, faced by local and highways authorities in their seemingly continually futile efforts in the war on potholes. This of course is also a double-edged sword: spend money on paying out claims and that’s less money available to repair the potholes.
Thankfully, it is not an entirely lost cause. There are a number of very innovative products on the market which make repairing potholes quick, easy and now cost effective.
Instarmac Group plc are a British manufacturer based in the midlands who have been manufacturing and supplying highway maintenance products for 40 years and they offer a range of permanent pothole repair products which are widely used by local authorities, highways contractors and statutory undertakers.
Instant Road Repair (IRR) is available in convenient 25kg tubs and comes in both 6mm grade for use on the footway and 10mm grade for highway use. Permanent Pothole Repair (PPR) is a fine graded repair product, ideal for use in filling rough repairs even when wet.
When used with SCJ cold joint spray, a bitumen based spray applied tack coat which comes in a 750ml aerosol , repairs can last for considerably longer too, meaning that a quick fix doesn’t need to be a temporary fix.
We have a range of fantastic offers currently available to ensure this pothole season doesn’t break the bank, including a free box of 12 cans of SCJ worth over £140 if you buy a pallet of IRR, or PPR, a free petrol 300mm Stihl Disc Cutter worth over £600 if you buy 5 pallets or a free Belle PCLX400 Plate Compactor worth over £800 when you buy 10 pallets!!
Why not check out all of our offers in our store here.
