Potholes are threatening blood deliveries, volunteer drivers warn

Published: 23:34, 12 April 2026 | Updated: 23:35, 12 April 2026 Potholes are threatening the delivery of urgent medical supplies like overnight blood donations, charities have warned.  Volunteers riders at regional charities such as Severn Freewheelers are battling dangerous roads during nighttime distributions of emergency supplies on their motorbikes.  Simon Grover, 60, fundraising manager for Severn Freewheelers, a volunteer group which covers north Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Worcestershire, said five of the charity's bikes had each sustained £1,000 of damage since January. They would usually expect one or two across a typical year.  The state of the nation's roads is putting the vital service, which is no cost to the NHS, under threat, as they struggle to fund the repairs themselves caused by the increasing numbers of potholes.  The unpaid volunteers spoke out and wrote to councils to fix the potholes, after the chair of the British Medical Association argued in an interview with the Times that government money should not be spent on potholes but on public health.  Blood bike volunteers had strongly disagreed with the chair, Jack Fletcher, who said: 'If you aren't spending your money on health then you have your priorities wrong. If you are spending it on potholes when the population is ill and sick, what are you doing?'  Simon Grover told the Times: 'You see people now swerving around the roads and when you are down a country lane delivering medicines in the dark you get walloped when you hit one of these buggers.  'I have written to the councils and they are all saying it's funding, it's underinvestment over the last 15 years and they are cash-strapped.'  Blood bike volunteers are struggling to pay for the repairs to their vehicles - which are being hit by more and more potholes  At the start of this month, Conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch was pictured smoothing out the roads in the West Midlands as part of her campaign trail for the local elections Two groups are broadly responsible for the nation's roads - the National Highways, which are responsible for 4,500 miles of motorways and A-roads, and 154 local authorities in England who are responsible for the rest of the 183,000 miles of roads.  The annual report by the Asphalt Industry Alliance last year found that one in six miles of the local road network had less than five years of structural life remaining.  It also estimated the cost of repairing all of the pothole-ridden roads across the nation to be a staggering £17billion, and it would take over a decade to carry out.  At the start of this month, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch launched a National Pothole Patrol plan, claiming Britain's roads had reached 'breaking point' under Labour.  According to the Tories, the scheme - incorporating hundreds of modern, specialist road-repair machines - would be financed through savings made in the party's £47bn savings plan.  No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.