Thursday January 15th 2026
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Paul Kelly
Proactive Scottish Borders Council tops the charts in Scotland for pothole-filling success, according to a new study.
The Borders has emerged as the area that carries out the most pothole repairs.
The council area is rated the third best in Great Britain and the only local authority in Scotland in the top ten list from Cinch, the online car retailer.
Cinch has shared data from Freedom of Information requests that were submitted to all 207 road-maintaining authorities in Great Britain to uncover the scale of the nation’s pothole problem.
According to Cinch, the area of Scotland that has carried out the most pothole repairs since 2022 was found to be Scottish Borders Council – with 157,545 repairs.
This puts it at number three on the nationwide list, behind Devon County Council and Surrey County Council.
Rounding out the top five after SBC are Northumberland County Council and Kent County Council, with 143,899 and 143,555 repairs respectively.
Overall, councils in the Great Britain have carried out a total of 4,952,744 pothole repairs since 2022.
According to Cinch, the increasing number of repairs highlights the scale of the issue rather than indicating progress.
The organisation states that “councils are having to patch roads reactively as roads deteriorate faster than long-term resurfacing programmes can keep pace with”.
Latest figures published by SBC in August last year revealed that more than 500 potholes were filled in across the region over a previous three months period – thanks to a game-changing road repair machine.
SBc Contracts delivers infrastructure improvements across the council’s roads and built estate.
The improvements are funded from the council’s capital programme and include road surface treatment and patching, civil engineering works and sign manufacture.
Between April and June 2025 workers commenced or successfully completed ten surface dressing patching sites – covering an area of approximately 10,700m2.
The local authority’s Pothole Pro machine continues to provide an alternative to traditional patching methods and was used to complete repairs on 538 potholes using asphalt over the three month period.
Four years ago Scottish Borders Council acquired a JCB Pothole Pro – which costs around £165,000 or can be hired for around £600 a month – amid growing concern at the poor state of the region’s roads.
The Pothole Pro is seen as a way of patching up roads and keeping them safe.
It combines three machines in one and can repair a pothole in less than eight minutes – four times quicker than standard methods and at half the cost of current solutions.
The machine is needed more than ever with the pothole menace costing cash-strapped UK drivers an estimated £1.48 billion a year in repairs.
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