A pothole is easy to ignore until the day it takes out a tyre, a wheel or your front suspension — and by then it has probably been there for months. The roads that actually get repaired are rarely the ones that generate the loudest complaints. They're the ones that have been reported properly, with a location, a photo and a reference number, and then chased when nothing happens.

Here's how to do that without wasting your time.

Councils fix what's been logged

Highways teams don't drive every road every week. Most work from scheduled safety inspections — busier routes more often, quiet lanes and estate roads less — plus a list of defects that members of the public have reported. If nobody has reported the hole at the end of your street, it may not exist as far as the maintenance schedule is concerned.

That matters beyond the repair itself. Every report creates a dated record. If a defect is left and a car is damaged, or a cyclist swerves and falls, that record shows when the council knew about it. Reports also stack up: a stretch of road with a dozen logged defects is far more likely to be considered for resurfacing than one with a single grumble attached to it.

A reference number is what turns "somebody should fix that" into a dated record the council has to answer for.

What's worth reporting

Potholes are the obvious one, but the list is longer than most people realise:

• Potholes in the carriageway, including ones sitting in wheel tracks and at junctions.
• Sunken or rocking drain covers, and missing gully covers.
• Damaged kerbs and broken paving on footways, particularly where slabs have lifted into a trip hazard.
• Blocked gullies and drains that flood the road or pavement every time it rains.
• Faded markings, obscured signs and overgrown vegetation blocking sight lines at a junction.
• Damaged bollards, safety barriers and illuminated signs.

Councils generally judge these against intervention levels based on depth, position and the risk they create, and those levels differ between authorities, so it's worth checking your own council's published criteria. Even if a defect sits just under the threshold, report it anyway: a cluster of shallow defects in one spot is often treated as a single job.

How to report it properly

1. Check who owns the road. Most residential streets belong to the council, but motorways and many major A roads in England are managed by National Highways, and some lanes and service roads are private or unadopted — meaning no one has a duty to maintain them. Your council's reporting page usually has a map that settles it in seconds.
2. Use the council's own form where you can. It goes straight into the system that generates work orders and gives you a reference number on the spot. Council apps and FixMyStreet also work — FixMyStreet passes reports to the relevant authority — but the council's own route is the most reliable.
3. Pin the location precisely. "Near the shop" is useless. Give a house number or lamp column number, the direction of travel, and the distance from a junction.
4. Photograph it with scale. One close-up with something in frame for size — a coin, a foot, a tape measure — and one wide shot showing where it sits in the road. Daylight and dry conditions make the depth readable.
5. Describe the risk, not your mood. "About 10cm deep in the nearside wheel track, fills with water, cyclists swerve into the traffic lane" is far more useful than an angry paragraph.
6. Keep the reference number and the date. Note what you sent and when. If the defect grows or causes damage, you'll want that timeline.

Tracking your report

Once it's submitted, the council should log it against a category with its own target response time — emergency, urgent and routine are typical — and those targets are published. Find them, note the date you're due a response, and check the status of your reference online in the meantime.

Two things are worth knowing. If a report comes back as "no action required", that's a decision you can ask them to explain in writing. And if the form tells you the defect has already been reported, that's good news: it's on the list. Ask for the existing reference and add your name to it.

When nothing happens

Give the council its own published timescale, then work up through these steps.

• Chase in writing. Email the highways team quoting your reference and the date you reported it, and ask for the current status and the inspection history of that stretch of road. Written requests are harder to lose than phone calls.
• Contact your local councillor. They can raise a specific reference directly with the highways manager, and a query with a name, a reference and photos attached tends to move faster than an anonymous one.
• Make a freedom of information request for the inspection records covering that road if you want to know how often it's checked and whether anything was logged before you reported it.
• Use the council's formal complaints procedure. It puts a clock on a response and creates a paper trail. In England, if the final response still doesn't resolve matters, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman can look at the case; Scotland and Wales have their own ombudsman services. They normally expect you to finish the council's process first.
• Join forces with neighbours. Several separate reports about the same stretch carry more weight than one, and a parish or community council can raise the whole road rather than a single hole.

If your vehicle or property has been damaged, you can ask the council about a compensation claim. Councils often rely on evidence that they inspected and maintained the road to a reasonable standard, so take photos, keep receipts and get any damage assessed quickly. If you're thinking about making a claim, it's sensible to take proper advice before committing time to it.

Small habits that get roads fixed

Report it the day you notice it, not the day it damages something. One clear report per defect beats five vague ones. Don't paint or chalk the road yourself — some councils take a dim view of it, and it can obscure the defect when the inspector finally arrives. Keep a folder, digital or paper, with your reference numbers, dates and photos.

And if a repair is bodged or washes out within weeks, report it again as a new defect and quote the old reference. Repeat failures in the same spot are exactly the kind of evidence that pushes a road up the resurfacing list — and that, rather than any single pothole, is usually the fix worth having.

Photo: William Gevorg Urban / Pexels