North Lancashire potholes: claim of "fantastic" improvement met with scepticism amid statistics spat

A row has broken out over the condition of Lancashire’s roads after the politician in charge of them claimed they were now in a “fantastic state” - while opposition councillors accused the authority of lowering its own standards.

Warren Goldsworthy, Lancashire County Council's cabinet member for highways and transport, was speaking after data covering pothole repair performance was published for the first time in almost a year.

The usual quarterly publication of the statistics was blacked out between October 2025 and March 2026 as a result of what the authority said was a change in the way the figures were reported by a contractor that carries out some of the repair work on its behalf - making them incomparable to previous periods.

The introduction of a new IT system in the spring saw the Reform UK-run county council start from scratch with the new reporting process - and it has now commenced data publication once again with a headline stat showing it exceeded its overarching highway condition and maintenance target between April and June this year.

However, a meeting of the authority heard that the target in question had been cut since performance against it was last made public in November 2025, six months after Reform took control from the previous Conservative administration.

That shift prompted the Tory group to claim County Hall had moved the goalposts that it used to measure success. Meanwhile, opposition members also said that the experience of the roads in their own areas was at odds with the positive picture being painted by Reform.

But County Cllr Goldsworthy accused his political opponents of peddling "anecdotal nonsense” when there was now hard evidence to which he could point - including there not currently being “a single [reported] pothole” waiting more than the maximum target time of 20 days for repair.

Noting an overall “highways index” score of 8.7 out of 10 for April to June 2026 - against a target of 7.3 - he said: “The latest published performance data shows that we are exceeding on key measures and - combined with the significant programme of repairs, resurfacing and preventative maintenance carried out across Lancashire over the last 12 months - [that] means…we are heading into the winter in a far better and stronger position and will continue to prepare the network for the colder months ahead.”

Turning his fire on previous Conservative and Labour periods in office, County Cllr Goldsworthy added: “We can all see what the roads [are] like. Of course, [we have] got more to do - [that’s] because you neglected them for 20 years. But…they are in a fantastic state compared to where they were.”

At the authority’s budget-setting meeting in February he had apologised for the fact that Lancashire's roads were in “terrible” condition and had been “since Christmas”.

However, opposition groups lined up to rubbish the suggestion that Reform had since presided over a pothole panacea.

Conservative group deputy leader Peter Buckley highlighted that the overall highways performance target was set at nine out of 10 when the statistic was last published late last year - meaning the revised 7.3 threshold was now 1.7 points lower. That would also have meant the 8.7 score achieved between April and June - quarter 1 of the 2026/27 financial year - would have been below target under the previous standard.

In contrast, performance in quarters 1 and 2 of last year - from April to September 2025 - easily cleared the higher bar, reaching 9.7 and 9.4 respectively.

“So, yes, you are above target, but…that is because the target value has reduced,” said County Cllr Buckley. “I'm trying to make sure that everybody deals with facts and not rhetoric.”

County Cllr Goldsworthy said targets were set by the authority’s highways officers, not elected members - but offered no explanation as to why the main measure had been reduced following the introduction of the new computer system.

Querying the data itself, Tory group leader Aidy Riggott added that one pothole he had reported was still unfulfilled after 20 days - and advised County Cllr Goldsworthy to “be honest [and] admit you've had challenges”.

“You can't deny what is the truth…the roads are in a terrible state,” he said.

Progressive Lancashire main opposition group member Mohammed Iqbal offered to take County Cllr Goldsworthy on a “tour” of his Brierfield and Pendle West division in order to see potholes he had “reported over a number of weeks [which] are still there and are getting worse as we're coming up to winter”.

Liberal Democrat David Whipp accused the ruling group of donning “The Emperor's New Clothes” in its claims about highway defects and “pretending that there has been this massive improvement”.

His party colleague Mark Jewell said the first set of new statistics since the problems encountered between last autumn and this spring should be treated as a "baseline” - and only if any improvements were sustained in the coming quarters should the administration be championing them.

He also cited a stretch of Blackpool Road - in the Preston South West division he represents - as an example of where a “complete repair” in an area of multiple potholes would have made more sense than repeat visits, of which he said there had been a dozen in each of the last two years, with more likely to be needed imminently.

However, County Cllr Goldsworthy suggested - in a separate part of the meeting - that it was the previous Conservative administration that had been guilty of temporary “blobbing” jobs.

“So when you said you did 10 potholes. you actually repaired two potholes five times - which is exactly why I think people were still running into them months later and damaging their cars,” he said.

The county council’s cabinet last month approved adding an extra £10m to the capital budget for highways maintenance this year, on top of the previously agreed use of £5m from a £10.4m highways department underspend from 2025/26.

The decision took the total pot to £88.9m for 2026/27, £48.5m of which comes from a government grant that was boosted by £12.3m last year.

The cash is used for pre-planned resurfacing projects and repairing potholes as they emerge - along with the upkeep of bridges, drains, streetlamps and traffic lights - along the 4,400 miles of road for which Lancashire County Council is responsible, excluding routes in the standalone Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen council aeras.

In the dark over data

During the latter stages of the Tories’ eight years in control of the county council - which ended in May 2025 - the authority published performance data for pothole repairs broken down by response time categories.

Those are the timeframes within which defects over 40mm in depth should be rectified, as dictated by the urgency of the problem. The categories are four hours, two days, five days and 20 days. Options for 24-hour and 10-day fixes were dropped last year.

However, from September 2025, the new Reform UK administration published only a combined single performance measure for highway condition and maintenance, which incorporated the timeliness of surface repairs, streetlight fixes and the percentage of gullies cleaned.

As of the introduction of the new IT system in spring 2026, the consolidated figure is presented as a ‘highways index’ - scored out of 10 - and based on six factors.

Each of the underlying elements now has a 73 percent target, including that for the proportion of defects fixed on time. That is down from 90 percent under the previous repair priority standards.

In addition, performance against the individual response time categories is no longer published.

The Lancashire Post asked Lancashire County Council to explain the rationale for combining that aspect of the repair statistics into one figure - and to provide the performance of the individual measures that underpin it for data that has now been issued for the April-June period this year. However, a response had not been received by the time of publication.

Back in February, the Post was advised that the number-crunching work that would be needed to make the unpublished performance data for the six months between October 2025 and March 2026 comparable to previous periods was unlikely ever to be carried out. County Cllr Goldsworthy described the figures at February's cabinet meeting as “no longer accurate”.

However, a meeting of the full council last week heard that those statistics had been obtained via an as-then unpublished freedom of information request by media outlet The Lancashire Lead, which County Cllr Riggott said showed a “shocking and abysmal level of performance” against the 20-day standard during last winter. Several opposition members referenced figures of below 20 percent for the proportion of defects fixed by that deadline.

Fresh start for highways statistics

Lancashire County Council’s new ‘highways index’ measure for the condition of the roads and the maintenance of associated assets sets a performance target of 7.3 out of 10.

For quarter 1 of 2026/27 - covering the period between April and June this year - it exceeded that target, achieving a score of 8.7.

That overall rating is made up of six individual measures, each of which have their own 73 percent target - and all bar one are being surpassed, as shown below.

Asset Condition (50 percent of overall score)

Percentage of defect repairs completed on time - 80.90 percent

Percentage of defect repairs completed as a ‘first time’ fix - 83.71 percent

Overall condition factor (the percentage of the ABC road network rated as green or amber) - 94.56 percent

Customer Service (50 percent of overall score)

Percentage of highway safety inspections completed on time - 50.56 percent

Percentage of drainage cleansed on time - 100 percent

Percentage streetlighting fixed on time - 98.43 percent

Source: Lancashire County Council cabinet report