We carry out regular inspections of roads, pavements and the Public Rights of Way network.
The inspections are carried out according to our Highways Maintenance Plan.
Inspections are more regular along busy roads and pavements however we do know that issues may come up between these inspections.
Report an issue
Please let us know of any damaged:
- roads (potholes)
- uneven paving stones / paving slabs
- broken kerb stones
If the location of your report is on a motorway please contact the Highways Agency.
If the location of your report is on the A12 / A13 / A127 please contact Transport for London.
Report a damaged road or pavement
What we do after you tell us about an issue
Once you've told us about an issue, we'll look at what information you provided to work out the next steps.
Depending on how urgent the reported issue is we will prioritise and visit the site to inspect it.
How we assess and prioritise issues
We do our inspections in a way that is designed to identify defects that are likely to cause injury, damage or danger to users of the highway network.
The aim is to provide a consistent approach to assessing defects as well as incorporating a risk assessed approach to categorise and and work out response times for repair.
A defect that has the most risk and impact should be made safe and repaired more quickly.
When a highway defect is seen by one of our inspectors, they are required to assess whether it meets an investigatory level (that is the minimum level required for it to be considered unsafe) and more broadly whether it poses an actual safety risk.
In most cases, defects that are less than, or fail to meet, the investigatory level do not need any action.
Programmed repairs
As part of the assessment our highway inspector will then assign a response time.
This will result in one of five actions.
- Priority 1 - Very High risk - Imminent safety hazard. The response time is 2 hours.
- Priority 2 - High Risk - Urgent defects. The response time is24 hours.
- Priority 3 - Medium Risk - Non-urgent safety defects. The response time is28 days.
- Priority 4 - Low Risk - Non-urgent serviceability repairs. The response time is 28 days.
- Priority 5 - The defect will be monitored on future whole street inspections and considered for our planned maintenance programme.
Our Highways Contractor will then take possession of the site and complete the repair or make the site temporarily safe or sign and guard the hazard, before completing the defect within the assigned time period for repair.
Find out more
If you want to know more about repairing highways please go to our road resurfacing programme page.