‘One day I thought, that’s enough’: the people fighting back against pothole-riddled roads
Sitting in St Albans crown court, waiting for his case to be called, Derek Bennett’s anger momentarily gave way to a sense of disbelief.
Sitting in St Albans crown court, waiting for his case to be called, Derek Bennett’s anger momentarily gave way to a sense of disbelief. “I mean, there’s rape and murder cases going on,” he says. “I couldn’t believe I was there, with this stupid subject.”
Initially, neither could the judge, whom Bennett says remarked that such issues were surely a matter for the magistrates. But Bennett, a 68-year-old construction consultant who has spent decades navigating building rules and regulations, had read the law carefully. Section 56 of the UK’s Highways Act 1980 clearly states the “highway authority or other person” responsible for a road in Britain is liable to maintain it, and should it fall into “disrepair”, a member of the public may apply for a crown court order to fix it. The other crimes would just have to wait. Bennett was here about potholes.
In case you haven’t driven, walked, cycled, skated, scooted or taken a bus lately, Britain’s roads are in a dire state. When the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, hit a pothole in Oxfordshire so deep that her car had to be towed recently, it struck a national chord – one that sounded something like kerthunk. (Alexander, gamely, joked that Artemis II might have seen a similar-sized crater on the moon.) The RAC attended 225 pothole-related callouts a day in February, three times as many as the same period last year. Since 2021, it says, pothole-related claims have risen by 90%. According to YouGov, the parlous state of British roads was the number one issue for voters ahead of the May local elections, a fact pounced upon by every political party. Pothole politics is by no means unique to the UK – after being elected mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani launched a city-wide blitz, filling 100,000 in his first 100 days – but here, the roads have come to represent a deeper malaise.
Like many people, Bennett has spent recent years watching the roads around his house in Berkhamsted deteriorate. “It’s been getting worse and worse,” he says. He wrote to Hertfordshire county council, but was ignored. Most people would have left it there. Bennett is not most people. “I’ve got an overdeveloped sense of justice,” he says, drily. “I must take some tablets.”
More than 53,000 people brought claims against local authorities in 2024 for damage caused by potholes: burst tyres, dinged alloys, wrecked suspensions. Such claims, which councils spend millions defending, are typically decided by Section 58 of the Highways Act, which sets out who is liable for damages and when. But Bennett was not seeking damages; he just wanted the potholes fixed. “I’ve been muttering about them like everybody does. Then one day I thought: that’s enough.”
He’s not the only one. Reports of “pothole vigilantes” are spreading. A few, such as the documentary maker Oobah Butler and the musician Rod Stewart, have filled defects using asphalt bought from DIY stores (well intended, but legally dicey and unlikely to last, so not recommended). Graffiti is common: one Manchester artist, known for highlighting potholes with obscene drawings, earned the nickname Wanksy. Under Section 58, a local authority must be aware of a road defect to be liable for damages – and few things raise awareness as quickly as a spray-painted penis. Others take a more polite approach: Hannah Clark of Staffordshire highlights potholes with colourful animal illustrations; Dave Fargher of Nottinghamshire uses toys to create tiny pothole dioramas; Tim Webb, of Orpington, prefers to fill them with rubber ducks. New sports have emerged: teenager Ben Thornbury of Malmesbury has pioneered both pothole bowling and pothole “fishing”.
Perhaps the best known pothole vigilante is Harry Smith-Haggett, whose TikTok account Pretty Potholes chronicles his travels around the country filling them with flowering plants. A landscaper and decorator, he started making the videos in 2024, when he filled a hole in his own road in Horsham, West Sussex. “If you use concrete or tarmac, that is putting a permanent structure in, which is obviously illegal,” he says. “I thought, well, I’ll put plants in and see what happens. And, coincidence, it got filled the next working day.”
Smith-Haggett’s videos of himself beautifying potholes have now been viewed millions of times. “We’ve done six today,” he says. Travelling the country filling potholes while following his beloved Crawley Town FC, he has seen more of Britain’s dilapidated road network than most. Asked where is the worst, his answer is immediate: “Nothing compares to Birmingham.”
The account has made him a minor celebrity: traffic regularly pulls up to thank him. Locals invite him in for tea. “I get thousands of people saying, ‘Can you come here?’” (He says he can no longer reply to every request, due to volume.) Last year he appeared in a video with Nigel Farage, but otherwise says he wants to keep out of politics. He is, however, forthright about his view of local councils, which he says have repeatedly tried to warn him off: “The way councils treat us is pathetic.”
Arguably the original pothole vigilante is Mark Morrell, AKA Mr Pothole, who for 12 years campaigned for road repairs, founded National Pothole Day and even gave evidence to parliament, before retiring last year to care for his disabled wife. Morell still runs several Facebook groups, advising 300,000 members on how to file claims and get potholes repaired. “I suppose I’m the elder statesman now,” Morrell says. He has wielded Section 56 notices himself, so when he saw Derek Bennett’s case, he was delighted. “Good luck to him.”
When his day in court arrived, Bennett chose to represent himself. “This isn’t rocket science,” he shrugs. He drove through several potholes on the way to the hearing. “I bet the judge did, too,” he chuckles. “I had a distinct impression he was a fellow motorist.”
In the end, the council didn’t even put up a fight. The judge issued a court order for the potholes to be repaired within 20 working days. Hertfordshire county council said it was “disappointed” by the ruling, and “there are much quicker and simpler ways of letting us know about potholes”. Bennett points out that if his letters had been answered, the case would not have gone to court. But his victory was just the initial skirmish in a broader offensive. If a Section 56 claim could force the council to fix some roads, why not others? Couldn’t the legal precedent be applied all over the country? “Being semi-retired,” he says, “does give me room for a hobby.”
What, exactly, is a pothole? Nobody can quite agree. Highways engineers deploy a rich and lyrical vocabulary to describe the many ways a road surface can fail: rutting, ravelling, bleeding, shoving, plucking, crazing. But potholes are complicated. “We would tend to call it a defect,” Ian Lancaster, director of the Asphalt Industry Alliance, puts it, diplomatically.
