Business
Pothole claims up 90% in three years, says RAC
Pothole compensation claims made to councils in Britain rose by 90% between 2021 and 2024, according to analysis by the RAC motoring group.
The study also found that only a quarter of claims made by motorists in 2024 resulted in payouts.
However, the RAC noted that the number of claims fell in 2024 compared with the year before.
The Local Government Association (LGA) said “ever-increasing pressure” on budgets was affecting councils’ abilities to fix roads, while the Department for Transport said the government was spending £7.3bn over the next four years on improving road surfaces.
Potholes have become a major bugbear for many drivers. Repair bills can be costly, and they can also cause injuries to passengers, cyclists or pedestrians.
The RAC said data it had analysed indicated that 53,015 compensation claims claims were made to 177 local authorities in 2024.
That was up from 27,731 in 2021, although it marked a fall from the 56,655 seen in 2023.
In 2024, just 26% of claims led to a payout, with an average sum of £390 given to claimants.
The RAC estimates that a typical repair bill for a family car with damage worse than a puncture from a pothole is £590.
Potholes can cause damage to shock absorbers and suspension springs, and can also distort wheels.
RAC head of policy Simon Williams told the BBC: “It does seem that councils have a variety of different criteria for what they class as a pothole.
“Often they have to be four centimetres deep and so many centimetres wide.
“If you hit one, it can cause a real jolt to the car and serious damage… not just damage to vehicles, it’s also a serious road safety danger, particularly on two wheels.”
RAC asked 207 councils about pothole compensation claims. Of the 177 that responded, Derbyshire County Council saw the biggest increase in claims over the three-year period, from 224 to 3,307.
However, Derbyshire councillor Charlotte Hill, the council’s cabinet member for potholes, highways and transport, said claims had fallen by 72% since May 2025.
“Going forward, Derbyshire highways can become more proactive rather than reactive, and work to make repairs before they become an issue for residents,” she told the BBC.
Glasgow City Council and Oxfordshire County Council saw the next biggest increases between 2021 and 2024.
In a statement, Andrew Gant, Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for transport management, said the emphasis “should be on maintenance work to prevent potholes forming in the first place, which is much more cost-effective than repairing them afterwards”.
“That is why we have invested nearly £14.5m since 2024 on the largest surface dressing programmes we have carried out for at least 20 years.”
Surface dressing is a preservation treatment aimed at avoiding potholes forming.
The BBC has contacted Glasgow City Council for comment.
A Department for Transport spokesperson said the government was investing £7.3bn over the next four years to help councils resurface roads.
“This will turn the tide on years of underinvestment in our road network, allowing local authorities to move away from expensive, short-term repairs and invest in proactive maintenance and prevent potholes from forming in the first place,” they said.
A Local Government Association spokesperson said that “ever-increasing pressure on budgets has impacted their ability to do so as much as they’d like” regarding road maintenance.
“New funding for roads will help turn the tide on the gradual decline of local roads, but this will take time to shift from simply filling potholes reactively – which pothole compensation laws require – towards a more proactive, sustainable approach.”.
Visa Inc. signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Visa is launching six new tools using artificial intelligence to modernize the process of disputing credit card charges, the company told CNBC exclusively.
The digital payments company said the tools are designed to reduce the costs and frustration of “outdated” dispute processes for multiple entities involved in the payments process: merchants, issuers and acquirers.
“Some of the challenges are these back-office systems are still largely manual,” Andrew Torre, Visa’s president of value-added services, told CNBC. “We really had to think differently about how we approach this at scale.”
In 2025, Torre said, Visa processed more than 103 million charge disputes globally, marking a 35% increase since 2019.
“Our goal is to streamline this as much as possible,” Torre said. “We’d love to be able to see that growth rate come down.”
Visa’s new tools are part of a larger push by major banks and financial institutions to incorporate AI into their businesses — both internally and in consumer-facing applications. JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs have both said they’re already using AI to hire fewer people. BNY spent $3.8 billion on technology in 2025, or about 19% of its revenue.
Visa said three of its six new tools focus on merchants, allowing them to address potential disputes before they escalate, managing disputes with generative AI responses and providing a deeper level of detail on order insights to manage confusion over unfamiliar charges.
For example, Torre said, many disputes are borne out of cardholders not recognizing a specific charge on their statements. With the new tool, Visa will be able to provide further details to financial institutions to show cardholders that data at a deeper level, according to the company.
The other three tools are built for issuers and acquirers, using predictive AI models to aid in case-by-case analysis, analyzing documents for summaries and auto fill and establishing an AI-powered dispute platform to manage the entire process in one location, Visa said.
“We’ll be able to get them insights and data so they can move from being reactive to proactive,” Torre said.
Torre said Visa’s new AI tools are part of a broader host of solutions for consumers, including a subscription manager announced last week that allows cardholders to cancel unnecessary subscriptions directly on the manager.
The automation will save time, money and unnecessary confusion for both parties, he added. Most of the tools will be generally available later this year, the company said.
“We really believe that disputes in this solution makes it much easier to manage and resolve,” Torre said. “We think it has better outcomes for everyone.”
Food bills are set to soar as much as 10 per cent this year as a direct consequence of the Iran war, a key industry body has warned.
The Food and Drink Federation (FDF), which represents 12,000 food and drink manufacturers, has hiked its inflation forecast for the year from 3.2 per cent to between nine and 10 per cent.
During the 2022 cost of living crisis, food inflation rose at a rate of 10.9 per cent, figures from the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) show, while the following year was even worse at 14.6 per cent.
Since then, it had dropped back to 2.7 per cent (2024) and 4.2 per cent (2025), but while this year had originally been forecast to deliver food inflation of 3.2 per cent, the latest assessment is that it will instead see a huge rise in the second half of 2026.
The FDF said the current situation is “unprecedented and hard to predict”, but it’s “clear that food inflation is going to rise in the months ahead”.
How much that adds to the average bill depends on the size and frequency of a consumer’s usual grocery habits, but on average, bills could rise by around £588, according to some estimates.
Consumer rights and review site Which? frequently assesses UK supermarkets for cost, and at the start of 2026, an average basket of 89 shopping products cost £161.56 at Aldi and up to £217.02 at Waitrose.
Assuming food inflation lands at the mid-point of the FDF forecast, 9.5 per cent, and that all products and supermarkets applied that uplift equally, that would move the costs of those shops up to £176.91 and £237.64 respectively.
Research from confused.com suggested the average UK household spent £119 each week on food shopping, which is £6,188 each year; a 9.5 per cent uplift to that equates to an extra £588 annually, or a total of just over £130 per week and £6,775 annually.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is due to meet with some supermarket chiefs on Wednesday, including Sainsbury’s and Tesco, over discussions to assess the upcoming impact of price rises on the cost of living. The Treasury has described it as a “fact-finding” conversation.
Last month, Asda boss Allan Leighton called on Labour to do more to help businesses after creating “a lot of constraints” for them.
For food manufacturers, there is both a concern now and another yet to come in terms of energy cost rises.
Diesel – used in farm machinery – is up by 80 per cent since the start of the war, while fertiliser costs could increase further, as well as supply being constrained. The FDF also points to lost sales due to cancelled shipments to the Middle East, with UK firms regularly exporting cheese, cereals, chocolate and more to the region.
Dr Liliana Danila, chief economist at The Food and Drink Federation, said: “The food and drink sector is already feeling the force of this geopolitical shock. As one of the UK’s energy-intensive industries, manufacturers are facing mounting energy bills, rising transport and packaging costs and disruption across key supply chains.
“These pressures are hitting simultaneously and are a significant challenge for businesses to absorb.
“The current situation is unprecedented and hard to predict; however, given the scale and speed of these cost increases, and despite companies’ best efforts not to pass price increases on, it’s clear that food inflation is going to rise in the months ahead.”
The FDF says its upgraded inflation figures were based on “assumptions that the Strait of Hormuz opens to cargo traffic within the next two to three weeks”, as has been suggested by Donald Trump this week, and that most commodities, including oil, gas and fertiliser production, return to normal within a year.
In the past few months, the FDF has repeatedly called for the government to offer support to businesses in the sector from rising energy bills in the same way as it does to those in some other manufacturing areas.
GST collections: India’s net Goods and Services Tax (GST) collections increased to Rs 1.78 lakh crore in March 2026, marking a rise of 8.2% compared to the previous month, according to official figures released on Wednesday.Gross GST revenue for March stood at Rs 2 lakh crore, which is an 8.8% increase over the same month last year.Abhishek Jain, Indirect Tax Head & Partner, KPMG says, “GST collections continue to show steady 9% annual growth, supported by strong import activity this month and consistent compliance. While export refunds have eased this month but remain healthy overall for the year”Refunds during the month totalled Rs 0.22 lakh crore, up 13.8% on a year-on-year basis, which resulted in net GST collections of Rs 1.78 lakh crore.Domestic GST revenue reached Rs 1.46 lakh crore, registering a growth of 5.9%, while revenue from imports was recorded at Rs 0.54 lakh crore, rising sharply by 17.8% during the period.Post-settlement GST figures across states presented a varied trend. While industrially advanced states recorded strong growth, several others reported a decline.Maharashtra contributed the highest amount to the overall collections at Rs 0.13 lakh crore on a pre-settlement basis, followed by Karnataka and Gujarat.Among states showing an increase in post-settlement SGST collections were Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, among others.On the other hand, states such as Jammu and Kashmir, Chandigarh, Delhi, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Assam, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, among others, registered a decline in post-settlement SGST revenues.
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