Fixing The ‘Pothole Problem’: How UK Councils Can Break the Cycle of Reactive Maintenance

Comment from Chris Newson, Business Development - Strategic Asset Management, Brightly Software 

A question for UK Councils: are you performing real asset management or are you just managing assets? 

BBC’s recent Panorama investigation, ‘The Pothole Problem’, highlighted challenges that every UK council knows too well. Issues like ageing road networks, rising repair costs, shrinking budgets, and growing public frustration, all continue to put collective pressure on their operations. 

By speaking to various local authorities, including Brightly Software customers (like councils in Blackpool, East Sussex, Somerset, Leicestershire and Staffordshire), the Panorama episode showed that reactive, short-term fixes and repairs can only take councils so far. 

At Brightly, we provide councils with smart tools to break that reactive maintenance cycle and create more proactive workflows.

Prevent the problem

Brightly Predictor, our digital, AI-powered, cloud-based solution, can foresee a multitude of issues that councils face today and help them to act pre-emptively, rather than reactively, to address problems before they get out of hand – or even arise at all. 

It does this through the process of asset investment optimisation: analysing data and strategically allocating financial resources across various assets and investment opportunities to maximise returns, while minimising risk. 

For councils, this approach enables them to carry out root cause analysis and fix problems before they manifest, rather than just managing assets through a traditional ‘responsive’ approach and only scheduling repairs once something breaks. This approach is inefficient, ineffective, and costs councils more money for emergency fixes than regular preventive maintenance would. 

The predicament of pothole repairs demonstrates this perfectly. 

Proactive interventions save local councils up to three times as much as reactive tactics, which makes Predictor so valuable, thanks to its ability to analyse risks, performance, conditions and budgets. 

Predict potholes 

Typically, councils deal with potholes on a reactive basis, but often, these repairs last little more than a few years. This has not only resulted in funds being poorly spent, it has also led to the public becoming resentful and distrusting of their councils. 

BBC’s ‘The Pothole Problem’ shows a much better pothole containment strategy. With the right solution (like Brightly Predictor), councils can assess where potholes are most at risk of appearing (based on historic data and predictive models) and carrying out regular preventive maintenance to (as much as possible) prevent them from appearing in the first place. 

This is a far more cost-effect strategy over the long term. 

So, with councils’ budgets tighter than ever, now is the time to consider taking the leap and investing in proactive, rather than reactive, maintenance tools. Your budget will be grateful, and so will your community.