Pothole insurance payouts are set to hit record levels – with one firm settling more claims in January than during the entire previous six months.
The average payout by some companies is approaching £5,000 amid warnings that damage to vehicles ‘could reach its worst levels yet’ without urgent action.
Tesco Insurance said the number of claims it settled in January alone was slightly more than half of its total for the whole of last year, with an average payout of £4,441.
The January payouts amounted to nearly a third of the total it spent on claims in 2025.
Industry leaders said the rise in claims is only likely to continue as roads deteriorate.
Pothole insurance payouts are set to hit record levels amid the Daily Mail’s End the Pothole Plague campaign (stock image)
It comes as the Daily Mail’s End The Pothole Plague campaign calls for more to be done to fix the issue.
Alex Cross, of Tesco Insurance, said: ‘It’s no secret that roads are suffering badly, with the strain showing on cars and vans from the growing number of potholes.
‘But it’s telling from our figures for January 2026 that pothole damage could reach its worst levels yet.’
Tesco said the spike indicates ‘claims my rise sharply this year, as the country feels the impact of deteriorating road surfaces’.
Motorists in Peterborough have made the most claims since 2020, followed by Northampton and Tonbridge in Kent, Tesco’s figures show.
Chelmsford, Plymouth, Glasgow, Guildford, Ipswich, Cambridge and Nottingham make up the rest of the top ten.
Areas with the lowest number of claims included Blackpool, Liverpool and Lancaster.
The RAC’s Simon Williams said: ‘Decades of underinvestment have left many roads in a woeful state of disrepair.’ He welcomed new funding from the Government for repairs but said would be some time before drivers noticed a real difference.
The AA has revealed the top transport demand for 96 per cent of its members is fixing potholes, and that it had 613,638 pothole-related callouts last year (an average of 1,681 a day) and 58,380 callouts in January.
