England’s Roads Are Dug Up 16.7 Million Times a Year — No Wonder Every Route Is Closed

• England’s local roads are opened up 16.7 million times a year — the equivalent of 96 openings for every single mile of road.
• Government figures put the cost of a single year’s street and road works at around £4 billion.
• And when the botched repairs wear out early, the bill for fixing them lands on you a second time.

If it feels like every journey you make now involves a diversion, a lane closure, or a set of temporary lights guarding an empty hole — it isn’t your imagination.

A House of Commons Transport Committee report laid out the numbers, and they are staggering: utility companies open up England’s local roads an average of 16.7 million times a year.

That works out at 96 openings for every mile of local road, and nearly 15,000 per council area, every single year.

We noticed it ourselves on the roads of the South East — school runs doubling in length, hour-long journeys taking two, country lanes shut in chains so the official diversion runs into the next closure. The data says the whole country is living the same story.

The Numbers Behind the Cones

Add in the works carried out by highway authorities themselves and the Department for Transport counted 2.2 million street and road works in England in a single year, 2022-23.

The cost of all that disruption — the queues, the diversions, the deliveries that never arrive on time — was put at around £4 billion. In one year.

Every one of those works sites means something taken away from you: a lane, a junction, a route you’ve driven for years, suddenly behind a row of cones.

And it isn’t only your time being taken. It’s your money — twice over.

You Pay for the Hole. Then You Pay for the Repair.

When a utility company digs up a road, it’s supposed to put it back properly. Frequently, it doesn’t.

Poor reinstatement work leaves roads weaker than before, wearing out years early — and guess who picks up the tab when they do?

In a 2025 survey by the Asphalt Industry Alliance, councils in England and Wales reported spending £66.8 million of their maintenance budgets fixing premature damage caused by street works openings — more than £395,000 per authority.

That’s public money, your money, spent repairing damage caused by private companies’ diggers. And it’s on top of what those same weakened, potholed surfaces quietly cost you in tyres, wheels and suspension.

But there’s one more cost of the great national dig-up that almost nobody talks about — and it’s the one that can put points on your licence.

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The Diversion That Ends in a NIP

Think about what a closed road actually does to you as a Driver.

It pushes you onto unfamiliar routes, where you don’t know the limits, the cameras, or which village has just cut its main road to 20mph.

It funnels you through miles of temporary works limits — often enforced by average speed cameras watching every yard — where the limit can change from one contraflow to the next.

More closures mean more diversions, more unfamiliar limits and more enforcement — and for many Motorists, the first sign that something went wrong on one of those detours is a NIP landing on the doormat.

If One Lands on Your Doormat

A ticket picked up on a diversion or through roadworks is not automatically the end of the story. Temporary limits have to be lawfully made and properly signed, and the prosecution has to get its paperwork right — and that’s exactly where a specialist eye earns its keep.

DriveProtect™ Members get direct access to a specialist Speeding Solicitor the moment a NIP arrives, who reviews the case and advises them exactly what to respond, for a fraction of the normal cost of legal help.

Got a NIP or points on your licence right now? See how DriveProtect Membership works — a specialist Speeding Solicitor in your corner from £25/month.