A pothole gets left because it looks like a little problem. Fix it early and the sums are simple. Leave it and they're usually worse than people reckon.
A standard hot-fill repair — cut it out square, clean it, prime it, fill with AC10, compact — runs somewhere in the £80 to £200 range depending on size and access. That's less than most tyre call-outs and less than a single windscreen.
Leave it and two things happen. The edges break away and the hole spreads sideways. Water gets in, freezes overnight and breaks up the base. A 200mm hole becomes a 600mm patch down into the sub-base, and £100 becomes £400, then £1,200, then a full bay rebuild north of £4,000.
On commercial ground — car parks, private roads, estates — the bigger cost is the claims tail. An open pothole that damages a car or trips someone turns into a claim, and the photos usually show it had been there a while. The defence that works is a “reasonable system of inspection and repair”. If your repair log is patchy, that defence falls apart.
The cheap option is always the same: photograph it, fill it, write down the date. That's the whole job.
