Swansea Council is launching a £300,000 campaign this week to fix roads across the city damaged by ice, snow and rain this winter.
Council teams filled more than 760 potholes in December alone and are working day and night this month to tackle the problem and keep traffic on the move. Some of the busiest periods saw the council receiving up to 150 new reports of potholes a day.
But wintry weather and heavy traffic is causing road surfaces in some areas of the city to break up, causing shallow large area surface defects, so extra teams are being drafted in boost the effort.
Andrew Stevens, Cabinet Member for Environment and Infrastructure, said Swansea is no different to any other town and city in Wales and beyond which are facing problems in the wake of floods, ice and snow cracking up the roads.
He said: “The scale of the problem is huge right across the country. But in Swansea we’re taking action to tackle the problem. We have four teams travelling around the city so we can fill around 100 potholes a day in the coming weeks.
“On top of that we’re bringing in a specialist team to do road repairs on a larger scale where the weather’s stripped the top off the road, leaving the layer underneath exposed to the elements.”
Cllr Stevens said: “This time last year we did a two-month post-Christmas pothole and surface defect campaign with extra resources, and it made a big difference. Apart from the potholes our patching team was fixing larger spots at the rate of one location a day for two months.
“This year our teams will again be pulling out all the stops to help keep traffic moving across the city.”
Extra resources being directed at the potholes is in addition to what the council’s regular road resurfacing team is doing as part of an investment of around £20million in highways and transport infrastructure during 2025/26.
Cllr Stevens said “In the last few months, our regular road resurfacing team have been doing major resurfacing work in Ynysforgan, Killay, Morriston, West Cross, Birchgrove, Gowerton and Llanmorlais.”
“They’ve been out and about recently on the A4118 in South Gower and on the A48 Peniel Green Road near the M4 resurfacing roads to help keep traffic on the move.”
Swansea Council looks after more than 1,000 miles of non-motorway road across the city and its road engineers carry out regular inspections to identify defects and get them fixed.
On top of that the public can report direct to the team as part of the council’s unique service pledging to fill in as many potholes as possible within 48 hours and to report back when the job’s been done.
For more information about potholes and to report one, go to this link www.swansea.gov.uk/reportpothole
