By Andrew Rowson
In March 2026, the Asphalt Industry Alliance published its latest Local Authority Road Maintenance Report. The most up-to-date average cost paid by English councils for fixing potholes under a planned maintenance regime (as opposed to more expensive ad hoc repairs), is £61.81 per pothole (report, p22).
On that basis, the £11.93m comprehensive loss Cambridgeshire County Council's (CCC) wholly-owned housing development company This Land Ltd recorded in 2025-26 equates to 193,000 pothole repairs.
In March 2025, around half of This Land's loan debt to CCC (£59.85m) was written off by CCC because the Authority and its auditor (KPMG) recognised that money would never be recovered. The write-off was a direct hit to the Council's frontline services to local taxpayers - including road maintenance. Using the above yardstick, the write-off could instead have paid for nearly one million pothole repairs (968,000).
Over the last five financial years, This Land Ltd's losses of £55.8m have been more than three times higher than CCC's spending on pothole repairs through its Highways contractor. The company's total losses in its audited accounts over over its ten year existence to March 2026 come to £75.8 million.
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