East Thanet MP Polly Billington has launched a new survey inviting residents and businesses to share how roadworks, potholes, and the condition of local roads are affecting their daily lives.
She says the survey will gather first-hand experiences of disruption caused by roadworks and poor road maintenance and evidence gathered will be used to challenge Reform UK-run Kent County Council and press for improvements to the area’s roads and pavements.
Polly says that Kent is receiving £274m to tackle potholes over the next four years, as part of the government’s plan to double the national potholes budget by 2030. But she claims the funding increase is not translating into improvements in Thanet.
FOI data
The MP has said that in total, £3.1m was spent in 2024-25, compared to £2.9m in 2025-26 on tackling potholes, according to data released to her by Kent County Council under the Freedom of Information Act. She says that data also shows the number of potholes filled in 2024-25 was 45,247, compared to 42,395 in 2025-26 after Reform UK took over.
The MP says the figures show the “bungling Reform UK council in Kent has somehow managed to spend less and fill in fewer potholes since taking over, while the state of Thanet’s roads continues to decline.”
However, KCC says those figures are incomplete and the authority has repaired a greater number of potholes in the last financial year than the previous year when the council was run by the Conservative administration.
‘Traffic chaos’
The MP said: “It sometimes feels like you can’t turn a corner in Thanet without striking another set of poorly planned roadworks, and I hear often from local residents frustrated by the number of potholes, poorly maintained pavements, and traffic chaos.
“Too often, roadworks seem badly coordinated, communication is poor, and local people are left dealing with delays and disruption.
“Reform-run Kent County Council is responsible for managing our roads, and they need to hear directly from the people affected. That’s why I’m asking residents and businesses to tell me about their experiences. Together, we can build a strong case for better planning, faster repairs, safer roads and pavements, and clearer communication with residents.”
KCC says the figures quoted were not for the full financial year. The Freedom of Information response to Ms Billington is dated as April 27th and does show the figures she quotes but these are vastly different to the data that KCC has now released. Pothole repairs are shown as greater for 2025/26 than the previous year. The 2024/25 figure has also been slightly reduced from that shown in the FOI.
The spending data is also much more than the FOI shows but it includes the funding of work for large scale patching and has not been broken down to separate pothole costs.
‘Final figures’
A Kent County Council (KCC) spokesperson said: “The figures previously referenced did not cover the full financial year and therefore did not provide a complete picture of the work carried out.
“We can confirm that the final figures for 2025/26 show that KCC repaired 53,537 potholes, compared with 44,939 potholes in 2024/25.
“Alongside individual pothole repairs, we also undertake carriageway patching as part of our wider approach to addressing road defects. During 2025/26, we completed 250,079m² of carriageway patching, up from 192,032m² in the previous year.
“We use a combination of individual pothole repairs and larger-scale patching to maintain Kent’s roads. The total cost of this work was £15,298,602 million in 2025/26, compared with £12,969,747 in 2024/25 reflecting our commitment to improving Kent’s extensive road network.”
Recent works include the resurfacing of the Thanet Way and 300m of the A254 Margate Road in Broadstairs.
Survey
The MP’s survey asks residents and businesses to describe how roadworks have affected their journeys, work, health and everyday lives. Responses will help inform Polly Billington’s representations to Kent County Council for investment in road maintenance and better management of roadworks across East Thanet.
The survey is available online at: https://survey.labour.org.uk/3djaq8exhziqrqeaqvues8ffp
Libore love a review… It’s like managers having a meeting…it’s better than actually doing anything…
Maybe Reform should be asked why they failed to give the right? figures the 1st time of asking
Information asked for in an FOI should be accurate else no one should trust the system
Yet she’s not interested in the poor condition of footpaths and cycle paths – from the party that declared a “climate emergency”! #greenwashing
ditto that Peter! As I use pavements now, on my Mobility Scooter, having had to stop cycling, they are often worse than roads for pot holes, and worn out surfaces! As a suggestion try riding a mobility scooter down Boundary road pavements, you can’t! They are a danger to man and young mums with prams!
It’s just all smoke and mirrors, this survey. The only thing which can be reasonablely assumed is Polly will be out of the job at the next election. Unfortunately, Polly has been a complete disaster as an MP, and that would be the same whatever party she represented.
Fir a few decades, county councils and other authorities have used term maintenance contracts of 3, 5, 9 and 2 decades of contracts being awarded. On the face of it, you would think it goes to the service provider with the best track record in safety, delivering road maintenance services to a very good standard at an extremely cost effective way. The reality is, it is not the most economical way in the future, is poorly managed by for example KCC, allowing poor workmanship to go unaddressed, promotes clandestine monopolies of companies, closing out smaller companies which could conduct the work more efficiently, at a more competitive cost, at a higher quality, do not get a look in. This means the term maintenance contracts is not cost effective and are being short changed meaning councils, meaning tax payers are not getting anything like value for money. This unitory authority brainwave is only going to make this situation worse, as at least at present local smaller authorities can and do still use smaller contractors which provides better quality, cost efficient service, if the new unitary authority loses this ability and use thecterm maintenance contractors, the cost and service provided for all aspects of road maintenance will deteriorate, without competition you lise excellence, when you give companies 5 years plus contracts, complacency sets in. Look around at potholes, line markings, signage, crash barrier, street furniture when your walking, cycling and driving around, you can see the difference between which contractors conduct the work based on whether they are term maintenance contracts or brought in daily.
Maybe Polly can issue a residents survey on the ongoing waste and collection debacle in Thanet ? I type this as I’m looking at my paper card recycling still on my drive which should have been collected last week.
Residents can report missing bins on a survey form created by her and then she can present a report to the local Council ?
Oh, there’s no political point scoring to be had there so she wouldn’t be interested.
She’s about as useful as the Labour lot at TDC.
To be fair on her, no-one is quite as useless as TDC.
Good point. It’s a pretty low bar to be honest.
We haven’t had waste collected for two months, is she interested in that? Or this just about Reform and point scoring.
There is dog sh!t and litter all over Ramsgate, residents waste is piling up and in this heat its putrid. Why is she doing nothing about this.
Because that would mean being critical of a local Labour Council so she would much rather invent campaigns to have a pop at Reform about.
What’s the point when your MPs, Cllrs, Heads of departments at KCC and TDC, responsible persons in charge of departments such as highways, either pass the blame, accept poor delivery, say they know and are working on it, or say not my pay grade, the MPs and Cllrs do same. No one deals with the issues at their root cause, they take half measures at best. Useless
Another survey what a surprise
Reform were elected on the basis that they were better than the tories.This was not a big ask, but it seems so far, that this threshold has not yet been met.
It would be nice just for once, if the “sparkling ” repartee seen here could address the issue. I know that for Reform these middle years of an administration must feel like torture. Don’t worry it will get much worse, as they find that there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and that DOLGE like the fairies at the bottom of your garden are a figment of the imagination.
For KCC there is no happy ending.They will be replaced in the coming years, but signing a 20 year highways contract was an act of madness.
I would advocate returning to a direct labour organisation as KCC used to.operate.Done right you get a flexible workforce that you control, not the contractor, and of course the element of profit disappears.
Yeah because we’ve seen how effective that model is with the in house TDC waste collection department ! It’s a total shambles. The model is irrelevant. It’s the way it’s managed and the way the contract is written which is important.
Serco was much worse,and Dover had a similar problem 2 or 3 years ago with Suez. To make it clear,as I said a well organised DLO run by competent persons is the Rolls Royce option and better value overall.Anything run by TDC is the Yugo version and likely to breakdown at any point. The thing is you carp, moan, and complain, but I don’t see any alternatives ever. Sniping from the sidelines anyone can do, actually running something that’s different.
The alternative is emptying bins every week, as they did before.
If I went into a restaurant and they served me up a rubbish meal that I had paid for, then I would just ask for something better that gives me value for money. I wouldn’t be in the kitchen telling the chef what to do or cooking it myself and still giving them my money.
Same with TDC. The Cabinet stood for election as, presumably, they had solutions and ideas on how to improve the district. I am not going to tell them how to do their job or do it for them. And, yes, I will carp from the sidelines as is my right as a local resident who pays full Council Tax as I see the services provided by TDC slide into the toilet. Whenever Labour take control locally they give the Portfolio brief to Albon even though it’s obvious to everyone it’s beyond his capabilities and there is always service failure on his watch.
I have friends who live in the neighbouring Dover district and they are totally bemused that our waste service is in such chaos. They use Veolia and it works fine.
Been there done it, i know incompetence runs right through from the bottom to the very top, your analogy of when its run well it’s the creme de la creme, is deluded, you could say that any company contractor, department is the greatest when run well, trouble is, it is not, that’s the point.
I’m unclear why this is necessary when I’ve alreadyreceived 3 paper copies of a KCC questionnaire on just these issues amongst others. Sounds like another waste of money or lack of joined-up thinking.
Have got a big pot hole round the back off my house in Millmead road-Thank godness i dont have a car.