Kent’s Pothole Stats Contradict Each Other: Press Release vs FOI Figures

Newspapers, or bloggers aren’t like the government… if we make state-ments we have to prove they’re true. 

Kent’s highways story this winter has offered a gentle reminder that the same might usefully apply to pothole statistics.

On 20 November 2025, Kent County Council’s own news site marked a “major milestone”: the 23,000th pothole repaired since May, with headline figures that read like a victory lap — 23,000 potholes repaired between May and November 2025 (up from 18,617 last year) and 121,432 m² of patching completed. 

Yet, in an Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) response dated 19 November 2025  — essentially the day before the celebratory press release — Kent County Council supplied a very different pair of numbers for the period since 1 May 2025: 17,145 potholes and 128,645 m² of patching.

So, for anyone trying to follow along at home (possibly while swerving around an unfilled pothole): in the space of one official news cycle, Kent’s pothole universe appears to contain two realities.

The figures that won’t sit in the same lane

Put simply:

• “Potholes repaired”: 23,000 (news release) versus 17,145 (EIR response).That’s a gap of 5,855 — roughly a quarter of the celebrated total.

• Patching area: 121,432 m² (news release) versus 128,645 m² (EIR response). Here the EIR figure is higher, not lower.

If this were simply “the council did more work after the request arrived”, you’d expect both numbers in the later announcement to rise. Instead, one goes up and the other goes down. That’s not a timeline problem. That’s a definition problem.

Before anyone shouts “liar”: the dull (and likely) explanations

It is possible for both sets of numbers to be “true” in their own separate systems, while still being misleading when presented as if they’re directly comparable.

The EIR response itself hints at why. It explains that the council records different kinds of work in different ways — small pothole repairs as “units”, but bigger patching works by area (m²) — and says it’s not possible to convert patching neatly into a pothole count.

That matters, because the news release presents a single, clean “potholes repaired” headline while also boasting about patching and other surface treatments. If the council can’t reliably translate patching into “how many potholes were dealt with”, then readers are entitled to ask: what exactly is included in the 23,000?

Other plausible causes of the mismatch:

• Different scope: the EIR response explicitly says its figures cover reactive pothole repairs and exclude programmed renewal/preservation schemes. The press release bundles multiple activities into a single narrative of “roads reform”.

• Different assets counted: the EIR response says it’s all pothole data (carriageway and footway). The press release does not clearly say whether footways are in or out.

• Different date windows: the press release says “between May and November”; the EIR request asked “since 1 May”. That shouldn’t produce contradictions on its own — but it’s another reason you can’t compare the numbers unless the council states the exact cut-off date used for each.

None of those explanations require anyone to be “lying”. But they do suggest the public has been given two different scoreboards without being told the rules of either game.

The “present” problem — and why it matters here

Under FOI/EIR practice, the ICO’s guidance is that an authority should generally disclose the information it held at the time the request, not whatever happens to exist by the day the reply lands. Under the EIR, the clock then allows up to 20 working days from receipt to respond.

That matters here because the EIR response dated 19 November 2025 appears to be a “snapshot” of what the council held weeks earlier (likely late October, depending on the actual receipt date) — yet it already reports 128,645 m² of patching. The very next day, the council’s public news release celebrates 121,432 m² of patching — 7,213 m² less — while simultaneously claiming 23,000 potholes repaired, compared with 17,145 in the EIR response: a jump of 5,855 pothole repairs in roughly the same short window.

So the public is left with a statistical magic trick: thousands of extra potholes “repaired” appear, while thousands of square metres of patching quietly vanish.

That’s why requests phrased “from Y to present” can become a trap: whose “present”? The day the request is received, or the day the response is drafted?

In this case, though, even generous interpretations don’t rescue the comparison — because the press release and the EIR response are dated one day apart, yet the pothole total differs by thousands while the patching area points in the opposite direction.

The sequel: a later FOI response repeats the 23,000

On 3 December 2025, a separate FOI response (different reference number) states: “As of the 20th November there was 23,000 potholes filled.” 

So the council is, at minimum, standing by the 23,000 figure in formal correspondence as well as in publicity. But that only sharpens the central question: how does 23,000 relate to 17,145?

Sir Humphrey’s law of statistics (with added asphalt)

In Yes Minister, Bernard once observed that government figures are best arranged to be “a complete nonsense”. Kent’s pothole saga doesn’t need a conspiracy to feel familiar — it only needs unclear definitions presented with absolute confidence.

If Kent wants residents to trust these numbers, the fix is not another photo-op with a shovel. It’s a short, plain-English note published alongside every headline figure:

• What counts as a “pothole repair” (unit repair only? patching jobs? estimated defects in a patch?)

• Whether footways are included

• The exact start and end dates

• Whether “last year” uses the same method

Until then, Kent’s roads may be getting patched — but its statistics are still hitting potholes.

If you have a story we should be looking at, then please do contact us at: TheShepwayVoxTeam@proton.me – Always Discreet, Always Confidential

The Shepway Vox Team

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