Time for action on potholes in Dudley as councillors hit the road to map the problem

Dudley councillors hit the highways for something other than election campaigning - to map every pothole on the roads of their ward.

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Members of the authority for Netherton and Holly Hall found around 120 carriageway craters on their streets and say it’s time for a permanent solution.

Cllrs Qasim Mughal and Shaneila Mughal said their survey showed the council is failing to get on top of the pothole problem and have submitted their map to council leaders as proof.

The Labour councillors said: “We are fed up of reporting potholes only to see them ignored or patched up badly.

“Dudley Council has the funding, but not the will to fix our roads properly. Residents deserve safe streets, not endless excuses.”

The pair argue Dudley has received millions of pounds extra from the Combined Authority and government to tackle potholes and a recent red rating for best practice in road maintenance from the Department of Transport shows things are still going wrong.

They added: “This red rating proves what residents already know – Dudley’s road repairs are failing.

“We’ve done the council’s homework for them by mapping every pothole.

“Now they must act, and act fast.”

Dudley’s Conservative-led Council said in the winter they were getting 150 pothole reports a day due to extraordinarily bad weather.

By the beginning of March the authority said it had already received 6,000 reports of potholes, compared to 10,000 for the whole of the previous year.

Speaking at the time, Councillor Simon Phipps, Dudley cabinet member for economy and infrastructure, said: “This is a national issue that councils up and down the country are having to deal with, not just here in Dudley, but that hasn’t stopped our team getting out there to carry out repairs.

“We also have a long-term programme to try and improve the overall state of the roads right across the borough that we have put more money into over the last few years, moving away from short-term fixes that were the only thing the council did ten years ago.

“The council repaired more than 25,000 square metres of road in 2025, with contractors continuing to carry out “night time blitz” operations as part of the work.”