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Wearing a trademark garish tie and less-trademark expression of fear and trepidation, Nigel Farage entered a rally in March 2025 clinging to the outside of a JCB lorry.

Knuckles white, the Reform UK leader rolled into the conference centre in Birmingham as a ticker on the giant screen behind him counted off potholes around the country: COUNTY DURHAM 65,038, CAMBRIDGESHIRE 64,915, DEVON 55,825.

Farage was preparing to launch his party’s local election campaign. Beset by mounting and unavoidable bills for social care and special educational needs, councils are finding their residents and voters frustrated at growing bills seemingly delivering less for the average resident. Reform have been open about hoping to turn the frustration into electoral success.

However, candidates across the country will struggle to fix the problem. Councils find themselves responsible for funding issues they have no power to fix and, in some cases, pledges to cut council tax they have no ability to keep.

Despite this, roads remain the main concern for voters. According to new polling from YouGov, road issues, including potholes and congestion, are currently listed as a chief concern of voters above the economy, immigration and health services.

With sweeping changes expected in the upcoming local elections, those coming into power will have little experience of how to combat what they see as decades of mismanagement.

“Aren’t potholes,” Farage began his speech, “just the perfect symbol of broken Britain?”

Water, contrary to popular presumption, is actually the main cause of potholes. While heavy vehicles do not help, water seeping then freezing into the tarmac is the chief offender. Rapid freezing and thawing exacerbates the damage caused by the moisture, breaking up the tarmac and creating holes.

The other culprit is social care. As budgets are stretched around non-discretionary spending on adult and children’s social care, the ability to spend more than the absolute minimum on roads is depleted.

Until recently, the technology of repairing potholes has seemed a relatively settled matter.

Traditionally, potholes are fixed by hand, often using spades and rapid setting tarmac, or bitumen for larger holes. Small amendments have been made over time, including the use of water-fed stone saws instead of drills, in order to minimise dust and disruption. Compactors run over cold-seal tarmac, before being topped with sealant to prevent rain water getting in.

The process is not particularly interesting – requiring two technicians working by hand, enveloped by fluorescent barriers and the always mandatory hi-vis jackets.

However, patchwork-style fixes are strictly time-limited.

Nick Thom, assistant professor of engineering at Nottingham University, told the BBC that these styles of repair may only last two or three months – enough time to schedule proper resurfacing, but not enough to provide any long-term fix.

JCB’s Pothole Pro, on the other hand, has created a high-tech advancement on patchwork potholing – an all-in-one vehicle that claims to fill potholes in only eight minutes, for the fee of £184,000 per machine. It is popular with Farage. Multiple campaign appearances, the introduction to a major speech and the centre of Reform’s conference centre have now played host to the vehicle his deputy described as a “fantastic machine”.

However, many councils with constrained budgets have focused on prevention rather than cure, treating and replacing road surfaces before they get damaged, rather than play whack-a-mole with potholes.

Paolo Maldini, the iconic left back of AC Milan in the 1990s, once remarked that if he had to make a tackle he had already made a mistake. Former Conservatives highways lead for Lincolnshire council, Richard Davies, shares his philosophical outlook.

“If a pothole has formed, you’ve failed. We have 5,500 miles of roads. We try to work out where the road is going to fail, and rebuild a five-mile stretch. You can’t be reactive.”

Davies represents a council traditionalist’s view of potholes. Flashy, techy solutions are a false hope – good long-term management represents a solution.

Farage and Reform are taking a different approach.

In September, the Pothole Pro loomed over the conference hall, as Reform led the news agenda and set out its plans for national government, having taken power in councils across the UK in the May 2025 elections.

The love for JCB is reciprocated: its owner, the former peer Lord Bamford, just donated £200,000 to Reform.

Farage also published a sleek video of him clambering into one of the 13-tonne machines earlier this month on Facebook, which sounded almost like an advertorial for the company.

“We’re going to be asking a lot of questions when we go into county councils as to why these machines have not been used already.”

But, in some areas, those questions had already been answered.

In Davies’ patch in Lincolnshire, one of the 10 new councils secured by Reform in 2025, the Pothole Pro had already been shunned following an unsuccessful trial some years previously. 

Councillors had decided that the Pothole Pro travelled too slowly along country roads, where there may be a long trip between repairs. For their part, JCB say speed is a benefit of the Pothole Pro, alongside the vehicle providing a much safer method of repair for those working on the roads.

If a pothole has formed, you’ve failed

But Davies says a couple of spades and a bag of tarmac in the back of a van is both niftier and cheaper.

“It works if you’re fixing things close together, but the bits that haven’t broken will break soon,” he says. “Potholes will spring up, you can’t stop them, but it’s about the best way of dealing with them.”

Nevertheless, shortly after their election, Lincolnshire’s new cabinet decided to bring back the Pothole Pro for a 12-month trial. Fellow Reform-led Derbyshire and Staffordshire county councils also announced they were trialling the Pothole Pro.

Last year, while under Conservative rule, West Northamptonshire county council decided its existing machine had become too expensive to use. Other council contractors are looking to sell their machines too.

Councils previously filled by world-weary technocrats are now the domain of bright-eyed Reform ideologues. That eagerness could disguise a lack of concrete knowledge.

Faced with a budget squeeze, Reform councils are eyeing the funding allocated to highway maintenance. That will limit their ability to solve the pothole problem, Pothole Pro or no Pothole Pro. And many are already raising council tax, despite their campaign pledges.

Davies, who lost control of Lincolnshire council to the Reform turquoise wave, has a view on their challenges.

“It’s like being drunk at a pub, with your mates. You talk about what you’d do if you ran a pub, and how you would go about it. But it’s different to doing it.”