New JCB pothole machines to be on Nottinghamshire's roads ‘within two weeks’

Back in February, the Reform-led council announced it would be purchasing at least two JCB Pothole Pro machines to help with tackling the declining state of the county’s roads.

The machines have been trialled by neighbouring Reform-run authorities in Derbyshire and Lincolnshire and typically cost between £150,000 and £200,000.

The council has recently embarked on critical highway projects, announcing £2m to go towards emergency repairs across dozens of sites in February and its £122.5m pot for phase one of fixing roads, which launched in early April.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service at a meeting on April 23, Coun Mick Barton (Ref), council leader, said the new machines will be used for around 16 square metres of patching repairs, which then prepares roads for surface dressing.

He said: “Once we’ve patched them all and got them all into a satisfactory condition, then we’ll do the surface dressing.

“They will definitely be on the roads within the next two weeks – maybe the end of next week – but we’ll quantify that in the next few days.”

The leader said once the machines are out on the roads, they will be used every day.

He continued: “They’ll be able to do 200-250sqm a day and we’re going to judge that every day how much they do, on a weekly basis and monthly basis to make sure we’re getting value for money.”

Road conditions are known to worsen during winter months, where cold and wet weather can chip away at roads or more easily undo any temporary works or patching.

Coun Barton says the next winter period will be different, where highway teams will be working through all seasons, even laying hot tarmac during winter.

The council’s cabinet also approved the authority’s ‘phase two’ works at the meeting, adding millions more pounds to its £122.5m highways pot for 2026-27 in phase one.

An extra £58.75m will be pumped into the county’s highway network for 202-27, bringing the total spend on roads to £181.25m.

And when factoring in the £2m emergency works earlier this year, that figure settles at more than £183m.

Speaking at the meeting on the further cash boost, Coun Barton said: “But it’s not over now, we’re going to Parliament in the summer and will try and get some more money because we’ve got to now prepare for next year.

“We’ve got more than 130 people working on the roads at the minute.

"We’ve got the eight crews out at the moment doing the first-time fixes and two more starting in a few weeks’ time.

“The game-changer for me is the 12 months of the year they’re going to be doing that and that will make a big impact next winter.

"We’re working on the next winter’s programme already.”

Coun Rory Green (Ref), cabinet member for children’s and families, said: “This year we’ve seen record-breaking responses to pothole reports, higher reports.

“This is for the people and areas like Ashfield, that some of us represent, that have been abandoned for years.”

Both phases of spending should lead to the authority’s highways works backlog being reduced by nearly £100m, from its peak of £414m to an estimated £317m, the council says.

The boost of cash comes after a September 2025 survey found about 38 per cent of the county’s roads in ‘poor condition’, along with more than half of all road marking being in ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ condition.