Is 2026 the year where we see one of Britain’s most ordinary frustrations driving innovation?

Potholes now sit alongside the weather as one of Britain’s most common talking points. The RAC recently estimated that there were roughly six potholes per mile of council-controlled roads in England and Wales. Last year, we saw innovators stepping in to tackle the problem. In a world first, Teeside in north east England successfully tested a particular formulation involving the wonder material graphene in a public road to stop potholes forming in the first place.

Britain’s roads are deteriorating faster than they can be patched. RAC callouts for pothole-related breakdowns rose by 25% in just a year. The repair backlog has reached a record £16.3 billion.

In response, the government increased funding for local road maintenance to £1.6 billion for 2025-26. The 2025 Autumn Budget further promised over £2 billion annually by 2029-30 for local authorities to “repair, renew and fix potholes on their roads”. National policy intent is shifting from patch-and-pray repair towards planned network renewal, giving municipalities both the money and the mandate to invest in longer-lasting, smarter infrastructure.

There is something pleasingly British about tackling this long-standing national nuisance with a homegrown breakthrough. Graphene, first peeled from graphite with sticky tape in a Manchester lab and later rewarded with a Nobel Prize, has found uses in high-tech applications such as the world’s smallest transistor and ultrasensitive biosensors. Few imagined it might also reshape the surface of A-roads.

What makes graphene useful for roads is its combination of strength and its ability to conduct heat. The traditional road material, asphalt, softens in summer and stiffens in winter, which contributes to potholes. Adding a small amount of graphene, which is 200 times stronger than steel yet extremely flexible, changes that equation. Studies show that it strengthens the asphalt mixture and is claimed to extend surface lifespan by up to 70%, increasing resistance to rutting, cracking and moisture damage.

Graphene also improves the ability of road surfaces to transfer heat. This can lower the uneven temperature-driven stresses that, once combined with water and traffic, often turn into potholes.

Graphene’s ability to conduct heat offers capabilities beyond resilience. Road surfaces absorb heat, making them potential future interseasonal heat-storage systems that gather solar heat in summer and release it in winter for de-icing.

Graphene can also help give roads the ability to track strain, temperature and traffic, and feed that information directly into a digital twin, a computer simulation that can be used to measure road performance.

Graphene arrives during a creative period in road maintenance innovation. Researchers are developing AI self-healing asphalts to fix cracks before they spread. In Hertfordshire, robotic repair units are being trialled to spot and seal defects automatically, and in Nottingham, engineers are trying to better understand why potholes form.

The next step for graphene roads is adoption at scale. Following its three-year experiment, Essex County Council will decide soon whether to make graphene surfacing a permanent part of its road-repair programme. If it proceeds, that decision would offer an early example of the routine use of graphene in local road maintenance.

A major barrier to the widespread use of this innovation is the production of the graphene compound that is mixed with asphalt to make road surfaces. At present, it’s hard to consistently make batches that are high quality and stable outside the lab. While government research funder UKRI is supporting efforts to establish domestic industrial production and universities are testing scalable quality control methods, reliable large-scale manufacturing is still a work in progress.

For years, tyre replacements and wheel alignment bills from potholes have been a hidden road tax that benefits no one. With 96% of drivers ranking potholes as the top transport concern, the menace has become frontline politics and the government is now reshuffling billions to tackle them. If we can scale production, a longer-lasting resurfacing technology would be a rare chance for authorities to claim visible results on an issue that infuriates almost everyone.