Potholes and Pledges on The Eastbourne Campaign Trail

As political parties continue their UK general election campaign in Eastbourne, potholes appear repeatedly on the agenda.

Pothole in Meads, Eastbourne (photo by author).

From asking previous councillors about common week-to-week themes, they have said it is really about pothole complaints. No surprise then, when trundling along the paths of Langney canvassing with Old Town’s Liberal Democrat councillor, Ali Dehdashty, he replied, “It is mostly potholes, really”, when I asked about his primary issues and complaints raised by residents.

Complaints to the East Sussex Council about potholes and other road defects in the years 2022–2023 have risen to 26,309. Reports doubled those of the previous year, which also roughly doubled the year before those (source: Eastbourne Reporter). However, each complaint may be for the same pothole or road defect. An East Sussex highways spokesperson has said the increase in potholes and road defects is because of high levels of rain in the winter months.

The primary issue is that road defects and potholes can cause damage to the vehicle wheels and be pretty dangerous, but they take money to fix. In response, on the Lib Dem campaign trail, a resident said, “It costs a lot of money to get my wheel fixed, though!” and “This government is doing nothing to fix the problem”.

Multiple potholes in the road (photo by author).

It’s sort of a strange key performance indicator of the government and national economy’s performance. You can gauge how well a country is doing or not by how much funding and support local councils have to improve the roads. The Conservative government has come under fire recently, and it seems as if the stability of the ground beneath their feet is literally and figuratively crumbling.

The Eastbourne Liberal Democrat candidate, Josh Babarinde, promises to campaign for better road quality, amongst other critical themes like “solving the sewage crisis,” NHS funding, and regaining trust. Others, like the newly elected Meads councillor, Councillor Brett Wright, were also keen to get into local politics to do something about the roads.

Vitally, siphoning off the funding from the central government becomes the critical fork in the road. East Sussex County Council had funding of £2,360,000 in the year 2023 to work on the different categories of potholes. Nevertheless, not all the potholes were fixed.

It isn’t easy to see what Josh Babarinde, the likely frontrunner to take over from the Conservative MP Caroline Ansell, could practically do to improve our streets. Channelling off funding from a Labour government potentially more concerned with other Labour seats and their future prosperity may hinder the most straightforward projects like road management. When securing financing, it is better to have your local MP belonging to the same political party as the one in power at the national level.

Smaller pothole (photo by author).

Labour, the Green Party, Reform, UKIP, and other alternative candidates of the past are often seen as a ‘wasted vote’ in Eastbourne due to the popularity of the Lib Dems and the Conservative Party. Josh Babarinde or Caroline Ansell appears to be Eastbourne’s choice when choosing someone to raise our everyday problems.