Pothole councillor admits Northants roads 'not up to standard' after A6 temporary repair collapses within hours

Cllr Matt Binley, North Northamptonshire Council’s (NNC) executive member for highways, travel and assets, was responding to multiple requests for comments put in by The Northants Telegraph after the A6 was closed by Northants Police due to a huge pothole on Sunday, January 5.

The pothole saga continued as a temporary repair on the busy A-road – Station Road, Irthlingborough – collapsed after less that four days.

Worse was to come when the temporary repair on the southbound side of the River Nene viaduct bridge began to crumble and collapse within hours of it being filled on January 8.

Cllr Binley said: “The A6 at Irthlingborough is regularly inspected with any safety related defects identified and repaired.

"This section of road is inspected on a monthly basis and was previously inspected on December 10, 2024 and prior to that the 12th November 2024, it was then visited by a member of the highways maintenance team on Friday, January 3 (2025) with no safety defects identified.”

Cllr Binley explained the cold weather was to blame.

He said: “At this time of year, potholes can form extremely quickly, particularly on roads with high traffic volumes and heavy goods vehicles, also when conditions have been wet and very cold - as we saw last week, with freezing road conditions across multiple nights and the week before snowfall had fallen across the area.

“The section of the A6 was visited initially on Sunday, January 5, when an emergency repair was undertaken as soon as the team became aware of the issues. Further works were completed later in the week, with a deeper, more permanent repair being undertaken.

“On this occasion, the temporary repair failed initially due to several factors including the freezing, wet conditions and the volume of traffic on the road and emergency, temporary repairs are only carried out on very few occasions (less than 1 per cent) in order to make a defect safe before more permanent works can be completed, these are meant to last approximately a month so that the permanent repair can be facilitated.”

On January 9, a road repair crew was sent to make a complete fix of the stretch of road.

Cllr Binley said: “We are also aware of several previous similar reports along the stretch of road - this was in fact the result of the road in general suffering from minor defects which were then turning into potholes and was not the same pothole. This is why a much larger section of the carriageway has now been repaired in an attempt to resolve the repeated issues.

“The highways team will continue to monitor the area and residents can be assured that any repairs needed will be dealt with swiftly.”

He added: “In terms of our long-term plans for the A6 viaduct, a waterproofing scheme and full resurfacing programme is being developed for 2025 which will help with improving this stretch of road.

"As a council, we remain committed to ensuring the roads across North Northants are fit for purpose and we are regularly updating our website with details of areas scheduled for resurfacing - once the 25/26 surfacing programme is confirmed it will be published on our website.”

Cllr Binley went on to blame the government for lack of investment in the county’s roads and that the council was pushing contractors to deliver ‘value for money’.

In December pothole repairs for North Northants Council roads were given £3.28m boost of 'new' funding from the Government bringing their allocation to £12.4m.

He said: “We have recently been allocated £12.4m from the Department for Transport which will assist, but the 1,800km road network still requires significant investment from central government, and we accept that the roads are not up to the standards we would want for the residents of North Northamptonshire.

"We continue to push our contractors and staff to deliver best value for money, but this is a situation we are seeing replicated up and down the country, due to a lack of central government funding.”

Cllr Binley went on to say NNC has ‘significantly invested’ in the highways network with a £9m capital funding allocation over three years but admitted there was need for more money.

He added: “We do require more and significant investment in our road infrastructure which will need to come from central government, as the funding for our roads is meant to mainly come from the government and we were hopeful that the previous (Conservative) Government’s £149m highways allocation would be brought forward to assist us in carrying out a significant road resurfacing programme.

“Until such time we see a significant investment from the government, the roads will continue through the same cycle of getting gradually worse each year and the potholes increase in frequency and intensity during the winter months when the roads are most susceptible to break up due to the process of water ingress into minor road surface defects, along with the freeze and thaw process.

"It goes without saying that resurfacing the roads will reduce the number of potholes appearing, in turn this would free up more funding for further resurfacing works.”