Potholes aren’t just annoying – they damage cars and can be deadly for cyclists. And they are proliferating, as cash-strapped councils spend less on road repairs.

Could the solution be new road designs that stop potholes from developing in the first place? There are several high-tech approaches in the works, from self-healing asphalt to roads with inbuilt heating systems that stop ice damage.

And yes, if anyone doubted it, potholes really are getting worse. The number of these road hazards reported to local councils in 2023 was at a five-year high, according to a survey by environmental campaign group Round Our Way in January.

The RAC has also said the number of callouts from motorists due to pothole-related breakdowns was a third higher in 2023 than in the previous year.

Perhaps it’s unsurprising considering the falling spending on roads by local authorities, which are responsible for all roads except for A roads and motorways. The amount spent on UK local road repairs halved from £4bn to £2bn between 2006 and 2019, according to an analysis last year by the Local Government Association (LGA).

“Limited resources and a £16.3bn repair backlog means councils continue to prioritise road repairs according to local circumstances,” said Councillor Adam Hug, transport spokesperson for the LGA.

Brace yourself, however, as the pothole plague is likely to intensify over the next few months. Rain and wintery weather are big contributors to the road hazards.

Potholes begin as tiny cracks in the asphalt, on the road surface, that let in water. Freezing conditions turn the water to ice, which expands and makes the cracks worse, especially once ice begins to form underneath the road, creating holes under the asphalt after it melts.

A repeated cycle of freezing and thawing, together with heavy wear from traffic over the crumbling asphalt, means that once they start, potholes tend to get bigger and bigger.

One approach is to try to stop the hole from developing in the first place. Transport Secretary Louise Haigh recently urged local authorities to copy Blackpool Council’s pothole prevention scheme.

Blackpool’s strategy includes driving vans around the road network and using cameras to scan the asphalt surface, so emerging potholes can be repaired before they have a chance to grow – even when they are just cracks. “If you intervene early, you can prolong the road’s lifespan,” said Ian Large, the council’s head of highways and traffic management.

Self-healing roads

But there are more innovative approaches in the works. Several teams of engineers have been developing additives for asphalt that could make it more resistant to cracks.

Asphalt is made of gravel or crushed stone mixed in with bitumen, an oily substance that liquefies at higher temperatures, which is why roads can become slightly soft on hot summer days.

If the air temperature gets above 40C, any tiny cracks in asphalt tend to naturally seal up themselves, according to Dr Jose Norambuena-Contreras, an engineer at Swansea University. “The bitumen can flow,” he said.

Temperatures almost never get that high in the UK, so Dr Norambuena-Contreras and others have investigated adding micro-capsules of oil to bitumen during the asphalt manufacturing. The idea is that any cracks would break these capsules, releasing the oil, which would make the cracks seal up.

Cracks should be more likely to form where the capsules are, because that is where the material is the weakest, said transport engineer Professor Nick Thom at the University of Nottingham. “If a crack appears, it’ll go for where it’s weak.”

The first tests of a road surface embedded with such capsules was promising, showing less stone loss after two years, suggesting it is more hard-wearing. Now we need to wait for results from a real-life trial, where the new material has been used on a section of the M26 in Kent, along with a control section.

“If there are real differences they should appear five to 10 years after construction,” said Prof Thom. The trial began in 2022.

Warmer roads

A more high-tech approach involves trying to stop the freeze-thaw cycle that drives pothole formation, by using pipes of water to transfer heat from the warmer soil beneath the road up to the asphalt at the surface.

This would require two horizontal layers of pipes, one within the asphalt and one in the soil, up to 5 metres lower, with heat exchange pumps to connect them. The system would also work in reverse in summer to cool the asphalt by taking its heat to lower levels, which would stop asphalt softening and reduce the street’s air temperature, said Dr Benyi Cao, an engineer at the University of Surrey.

This approach is at an earlier research stage and it may be relatively expensive. On the other hand it could be cheaper in the long term as the costs of maintaining and repairing our current roads is £2m per mile over a typical lifetime of 20 years, said Dr Cao.

Porous roads

Road builders in the Netherlands are able to block the freeze-thaw cycle a different way. They have started making some roads with materials that are fully permeable, so rainwater neither sits on top, nor pools underneath the asphalt.

But this is being done mainly to combat flooding, rather than cut repair costs, said Professor Floris Boogaard, a climate adaptation researcher at Deltares, a research institute in Delft. The water has to drain into pipes underneath the road and over time these need regular maintenance to avoid getting clogged with silt.

It can be easier to repair any potholes that do arise, though, because the Dutch permeable roads are usually laid as bricks, and so these can be easily replaced, he said.

Prof Boogaard believes the UK’s pothole problem is chiefly caused, not by our different road designs, but lack of repairs. “Maintenance is key,” he said. “It’s mostly about your budget.”

What causes potholes?

Road surfaces are always going to give way eventually, due to the heavy wear they get from traffic. But another big contributor to potholes is winter weather, namely rain and freezing conditions.

Potholes begin as tiny cracks in the asphalt that makes up the road surface. This lets water get in, which can freeze when temperatures drop. Ice takes up a larger volume than water, so as the water freezes it expands within the cracks, making them bigger.

The next stage is when the cracks get so big that water can reach the soil underneath the road surface and pool there. When this water freezes and expands, it can push up the asphalt. Then, when it gets warmer, the ice melts and evaporates, leaving a hole under the surface.

When cars drive over these areas, the asphalt then collapses, causing a pothole. In a typical British winter this can happen repeatedly, sometimes with the water freezing every night and thawing every day, said Dr Benyi Cao, an engineer at the University of Surrey.

“One day can form a freeze-thaw cycle,” he said. “The heavy rain and the freeze-thaw cycle are definitely two big contributors.”

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“Where there is energy and dynamism, there is a market,” says Henry Howard-Sneyd, longtime chair of Asian art at Sotheby’s and founding member of the Asian Art in London (AAL) event, which takes place at the end of this month. Howard-Sneyd is only too aware of the “constant flux and flow of the Asian art market”, as he puts it. He and his colleagues in London have witnessed waves of new buyers from Japan in the 1980s and ’90s and from China more recently, whose aggressive bidding peaked in 2015.

Tastes have changed and power has shifted to New York, Hong Kong, mainland China and Paris. Yet this autumn season offers a reinvigorated London scene, with world-class, museum-quality pieces again on offer in saleroom and gallery, in part thanks to a forthcoming EU law on artwork origins.

Iwona Tenzing, whose gallery Tenzing Asian Art is making its debut at the Frieze Masters art fair next week, cited not only the “unparalleled exposure to an international audience” as a reason to show at the fair but also uncertainties arising from a 2019 EU law restricting the importation of “non-European” art into the bloc, which is expected to become operational by June 2025. Briefly, this requires proof that an object more than 200 years old and valued in excess of €18,000 was legally exported from the country of origin (itself not necessarily easy to determine, given changing geographical borders).

For works of art that left those countries centuries or even a few decades ago, this may prove an impossible paperchase. A theoretically laudable law aiming to restrict the illicit trade in cultural property is likely to have a profound effect on collectors, dealers and auction houses, and give London, which has lost ground to Paris, a distinct advantage now that it is outside the EU.

Tenzing, which has galleries in San Francisco and Hong Kong, will unveil a Tibetan thangka (scroll painting in distemper and gold on cloth) of the Buddha Vairocana dating to the late 12th or early 13th centuries, described as one of the rarest and most significant surviving examples of the period and priced at several million dollars.

Asian art has always been shown at Frieze Masters, but the arrival of the veteran Chinese art specialist Gisèle Croës in 2018 proved a game-changer. As a member of the fair’s selection committee, she argued for a more global representation of art and for an expansion of its range of older art, Croës explains from her Brussels gallery. At her suggestion, New York dealer Carlton Rochell joined the fray, contributing outstanding Buddhist and Hindu sculpture — Khmer, Indian and Gandharan. Last year, another New York dealer, Japanese specialists Thomsen Gallery, arrived; Erik Thomsen reported sales of several important works. This year, Thomsen’s folding screens and scroll paintings will be complemented by gold lacquer boxes, medieval stoneware jars and ikebana baskets.

Croës’s own stand also reflects Frieze Masters’ expansion into the realm of the more traditional antiques fair. Lined with late 18th- or early 19th-century Chinese wallpaper panels, she has created the “salon of a collector”, with lacquer furniture, imperial champlevé enamel garden stools — thought to have belonged to Marcel Proust — and bejewelled silver and silver gilt jardinieres (prices €40,000-€350,000).

Hong Kong/London-based newcomer Rossi & Rossi is presenting painters from the postwar Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group. Gana Art joins three existing gallerists from Seoul, presenting a solo show of Kim Kulim, a central figure of the Korean avant-garde. Shibunkaku of Kyoto presents postwar Japanese calligraphy, paintings and ceramics.

As Howard-Sneyd points out, this emphasis on Modern and contemporary ceramics, painting and printmaking in the broad London scene marks one of the biggest shifts in taste since the launch of AAL in 1998. The first of such citywide initiatives bringing together specialist galleries, auction houses and museums, the event reflects unusually close collaboration between the art trade this year: the leading auction houses are giving space in their showrooms to visiting commercial galleries and private dealers for the first time.

Three main ground-floor spaces at Sotheby’s will present stock from 12 galleries, including a show by the blue-chip contemporary Asian art specialist Sundaram Tagore, with jewellery, textiles, arms and armour among the mix. Altogether, the seven participating auction houses are adding 21 auctions of Asian and Islamic art to the 25 or so dealer shows. The most spectacular auction lot promises to be an exceptionally rare pair of 16th-century Chinese wucai or “five-enamel” polychrome “fish” jars and covers, with golden carp swimming among swaying lotus and other flora (Sotheby’s, est £600,000-£1mn). Only one other complete pair is known to survive.

In their own gallery in Clifford Street, leading London dealer Eskenazi focuses on the painterly early blue-and-white porcelains from the Yuan and early Ming dynasties ($500,000 to more than $1mn). Included here is another great rarity, a large guan (jar) from circa 1320-52, its panels ornamented with applied and incised flowering shrubs in underglaze copper red. Daniel Eskenazi is expecting to see Chinese clients and US museum curators returning to London. “When there is a critical mass of high-quality works at auctions, fairs and dealer exhibitions, true collectors do come.”

Frieze Masters, October 9-13, frieze.com. Asian Art in London, October 30-November 8, asianartinlondon.com

A PRETTY seaside town has compared to Cornwall – with a very arty history.

Collioure, in France, has inspired a number of artists including Picasso and Matisse.

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Now dubbed the City of Painters, the Museum of Modern Art continues on the legacy.

As many as three million tourists visit a year, despite having just 3,000 locals.

It was even named France‘s favourite village, in a local competition that has ben running for more than a decade.

Expect influences from both France and Catalonia – it is 15 miles from the Spanish border.

Otherwise it is worth just walking through the multicoloured streets, full of cafes, shops and galleries.

Don’t leave without trying some local Collioure’s anchovies and locally-made white and red wines.

A tourist said it was “one of the prettiest towns in France,” while another said it “could be compared to St Ives in Cornwall“

One of the main attractions is the 800-year-old Meiveal castle, Château Royal de Collioure which is easy to walk to and has the best views of the town.

Anna Richards, who lives in France, said of the village to inews: “So many artists have set up studios that every narrow street feels like a gallery.

“There are hundreds of different kaleidoscopic interpretations of the town, the harbour and the Mediterranean Sea.

“Its two beaches include a crescent of custard-coloured, slightly shingly sand between the harbour and bell tower, and Plage de Port d’Avall, the other side of the Château Royal, which is framed by houses as colourful as an artist’s palette.”

The Château Royal looks like a sandcastle between them, angular and built in blocks, as though it’s made from Lego.

The best way to get there is to fly to Perpignan Airport, with direct UK flights from both London Stansted and Birmingham.

Collioure is just 20 minutes from there by train.

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If you want an affordable stay, there is a Eurocamp just 15 miles away which the Sun’s Joel Davis visited.

Here’s another quaint village in France that is often named the country’s most beautiful.

A tiny French island is a popular place for locals to visit – that Brits may not have heard of.

And here’s the holiday region dubbed the French Cotswolds.

ALDI and Lidl have confirmed the relaunch of their popular wooden toy range with prices starting at just £1.99.

The budget supermarket toys are a perfect gift for this year’s Christmas.

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Lidl’s wooden range is expected to arrive in stores across the UK from October 17 with Aldi’s range available from October 10.

Aldi has announced that they’re bringing back over 50 products to choose from, but shoppers will have to act quickly after their range sold out last year.

Parents will be eager to get their hands on the returning favourites including the Wooden Toy Kitchen, scanning at the tills for £34.99.

The discount retailer chain is also bringing back the wooden Cuthbert which previously caused a stir with M&S fans.

In 2021 M&S lodged an infringement claim against Aldi arguing the chocolate cake was too similar to its classic Colin the Caterpillar which has been around for 30 years with an unchanged design.

But Cuthbert returned to shelves in February last year after the two supermarkets called a truce in an agreed settlement. 

To complete the kitchen experience, Aldi’s Wooden Kitchen Set (£9.99) includes coffee cups, a teapot and coasters.

This Christmas, Aldi’s range includes travel-friendly toys such as the Toy Roleplay Bag costing just £9.99.

The item features a Paramedic and Dentist Set, which allows your children to roleplay their dream jobs.

Aldi is also introducing the New Wooden Horse Box and Beauty Station, scanning for £24.99 each.

Here’s a list of all the wooden toys available this year:

• Wooden Climbing Slide and Arch (£39.99)
• Wooden Climbing Triangle and Cube (£54.99)
• Three Storey Wooden Dolls House (£39.99)
• Wooden Toy Kitchen (£34.99)
• Wooden Bike and Rocker (£24.99) 
• Wooden Aldi Supermarket/Market Stall (£29.99)  
• Wooden Horsebox/Beauty Station (£24.99) 
• Wooden Double-Sided Easel (£24.99) 
• Wooden Hospital/ Airport/ Zoo (£24.99)
• Wooden Castle/ Construction Sets (£24.99) 
• Wooden Washing Machine/Fridge (£19.99)
• Wooden Tabletop Assortment (£19.99 
• Interactive Dog/Cat (£19.99)
• Wooden Baby Walker (£19.99) 
• Wooden Fold Out Playsets (£19.99)
• Wooden Activity Tree (£16.99)
• Wooden Railway Sets (£14.99)
• Wooden Dolls House Furniture (£14.99)
• Wooden Doll Accessories (£11.99)
• Wooden Toy Roleplay Bags (£9.99)
• Wooden Kettle/Coffee/Hot Chocolate/Cleaning Set (£9.99)
• Wooden Kids Tool Belts (£9.99)
• Wooden Kitchen Appliances (£9.99)
• Wooden Play Food/Food Role Play Sets (£9.99) 
• Wooden Fold Out Vehicles (£9.99)
• Wooden Animal Train (£9.99) 
• Play Mat Sets (£9.99)
• Wooden Large Vehicles (£9.99)
• Wooden Doll Care Accessory Sets (£9.99)
• Wooden Kitchen Sets (£9.99)
• Wooden Building Blocks (£9.99)
• Wooden Ramp Racer/Hammer Set (£9.99)
• Wooden Grocery Sets (£8.99)
• Wooden Activity Boards (£10.99)
• Wooden Musical Sets (£8.99)
• Wooden Musical Pull Along Animals (£8.99)
• Wooden Doughnut and Cake Assortment (£7.99)
• Wooden Birthday Cake (£7.99)
• Wooden Family Sets (£7.99)
• Wooden Biscuit Assort (£7.99)
• Plush Dolls 2024 (£6.99)
• Wooden Magnetic Box Assortment (£6.99)
• Wooden Vehicle Box Set (£6.99) 
• Wooden Meal Sets (£6.99)
• Wooden Animal Number Puzzles (£4.99)
• Wooden Vehicles (£3.99)
• Wooden Teething Vehicle (£3.99)
• Wooden 2d Wheeled Animals (£2.99)

Lidl also confirmed the relaunch of its wooden toy range, which parents will be eager to snap up for Christmas.

The popular bargain chain will offer premium toy products for shoppers willing to spend more.

The supermarket’s Wooden Play Kitchen will be scanning at tills for a whopping £49.99 and features a play oven, light-up hobs, a microwave and a sink.

Lidl will also be selling more affordable items in their range such as their Montessori Style Wooden Rainbow Puzzle (£3.99) said to be perfect for households who enjoy hours of family fun.

Here is the full list of wooden toys available at Lidl this year:

• Wooden 2-in-1 Baby Clinic and Vets (£39.99)
• Wooden Toy Tool Assortment (£5.99)
• Wooden Workbench (£49.99)
• Wooden Railway Set Farm, Fairy Land, Police, Fire Department (£7.99)
• Wooden Train Set Construction / Fairground (£29.99)
• Wooden Railway Set XL City / Dinosaur (£39.99)
• Wooden Road City / Racetrack (£14.99)
• Wooden Train Set City / Countryside (£14.99)
• Wooden Train Set (£4.99)
• Wooden Kitchen Accessories (£9.99)
• Wooden Ice Cream Trolley / Tabletop Pizza Oven (£19.99)
• Wooden Chunky Vehicles (£3.99)
• Wooden Room Play Set (£9.99)
• Wooden Kids’ Easel (£19.99)
• Wooden Food Play Set (£6.99)
• Wooden Flexible Doll Family or Doll’s House Furniture (£6.99)
• Wooden Play Kitchen (£49.99)
• Wooden Supermarket Accessories (£9.99)
• Wooden Dressing Table (£39.99)
• Wooden Vehicle Sets (£2.99)
• Wooden Train Set City / Dinosaur World (£39.99)
• 3D Wooden Learning Toys (£9.99)
• Wooden Puzzle (£1.99)
• Wooden Stacking Toy (£7.99)
• Wooden Marble Run (£12.99)
• Wooden Games (£3.99)
• Wooden Learning Games (£3.99)
• Wooden Learning Puzzle (£3.99)
• Wooden Toy Assortment Building Blocks (£7.99)
• Wooden Flexible Doll Family or Doll’s House Furniture (£6.99)
• Montessori Style Wooden Rainbow Puzzle (£3.99)
• Montessori Style Wooden Counting Set (£7.99)
• Montessori Style Wooden Light up Box (£19.99)
• Wooden Learning Games (£3.99)
• Wooden Puzzle / Pull Toy (£3.99)
• Wooden Learning Board Assortment (£7.99)
• Wooden Learning Tablet / Wooden Mobile Phone & Camera (£7.99)
• Wooden Wall Toys (£12.99)

It’s worth checking ahead with your local supermarket if they have what you’re looking for in stock before you go to avoid a wasted trip.

You can check how close you are to your nearest Aldi and Lidl supermarket using this handy store locator.

And remember to scout around other supermarkets for more toy deals – you never know what you can find elsewhere for less.

It comes after Tesco issued an urgent recall urging customers not to buy certain mince pies because they could contain glue.

And shoppers are racing to their nearest supermarket to stock up on Roses, Quality Street, Celebrations, and Heroes tubs, scanning at tills for just £3.95 each.

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“I never had any formal art training: I just learnt as I went along,” says Indian collector and philanthropist Kiran Nadar. Her vast collection of South Asian art now numbers 15,000 pieces, a small selection of which is being shown in a major exhibition at the Barbican cultural centre in London, The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998.

In Nadar’s London home, an elegant apartment in a listed building overlooking Regent’s Park, one wall is dominated by a painting of horses by MF Husain — often known as the “Picasso of India” — while, on another wall, a painting by Manjit Bawa shows a flautist playing to a group of grey cows. Small sculptures by Henry Moore are dotted around on the tables and a beautiful inlaid ivory cabinet stands by the door.

Nadar, wearing a flowing green, pink and orange robe, is relaxed, friendly and open as we sit down to talk about how she started collecting, her philanthropy and the new museum she is opening in Delhi.

Her collecting began once she was married. After studying English literature at university in India, Nadar met her husband, Shiv Nadar, the billionaire founder of India’s HCL Technologies, when she was working in advertising and he was a client. “My first major art purchase was of two works by MF Husain for our home — in fact he was asked to paint one but he brought us two, so we kept them. And then I bought a graphic male nude, “Runners” (1982), by Rameshwar Broota — my husband was horrified! I was a bit crestfallen and told him we had to go to the studio and apologise [for changing our minds], but when he met the artist he said I was right to have the painting. And it is in his study to this day.”

But it was only after buying work by Manjit Bawa that she became “galvanised”: “I never really thought I was collecting, just acquiring. But then it reached a stage that we had no more wall space and I was just putting them into storage. It wasn’t even formalised storage, it was in the basement. I realised it was a bit futile to leave them like that.

By 2010 she had acquired 500 works, so she decided to create a space to show them, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) — initially on the HCL campus in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, then in South Court Mall in New Delhi, supported by the Shiv Nadar Foundation. A vast new museum, designed by Adjaye Associates, will open on a 100,000-square-metre site directly across from the Indira Gandhi international airport in New Delhi in 2026 or 2027.

I ask her about the choice of the Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye for her new museum. Since that decision was taken in 2019, Adjaye has been accused of sexual assault, sexual harassment and promoting a toxic work culture according to an investigation in the Financial Times last year, allegations which he has denied.

“The choice [of Adjaye] was made by a jury . . . which whittled applicants to six, out of the initial 60. And Adjaye was the outright winner,” says Nadar. (A 2019 press release said there were five on the shortlist from 47 applicants.) “At that stage, we had absolutely no idea about David’s personal life and we had paid about two-thirds of what our commitment was. So we continue to work with Adjaye Associates and David will not be involved as a person, on any of our projects, until such time that we are comfortable. That’s the way it stands today.”

While her collecting focus was on works by the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, a Mumbai-based collective of artists synthesising Indian art history and European Modernism from 1947, she also bought contemporary art: “I bought at huge prices. Then the crash came and even today some of the works haven’t reached what I paid for them at that time.” That “crash”, specifically in Indian art, took place in 2006-07 and was fuelled by speculation and the creation of art funds. Prices continued to fall over the next few years, in some cases, as she says, never to recover.

“We’re keen that Indian art gets more international recognition,” she says. KNMA part-funded the Indian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019 (only the second time the country has staged one) and this year organised a retrospective of MF Husain there. “India is such an important country. Every country has a pavilion [at the Biennale] and so should we; if there is no space in the Giardini, there must be another important space [the Biennale organisers] can give us. I think at the next Biennale, India will have its own space.”

As well as Indian art, Nadar’s collection includes western names: she mentions Antony Gormley, Olafur Eliasson and William Kentridge, as well as South Asian diaspora artists such as Shahzia Sikander, Anish Kapoor and Raqib Shaw.

Art isn’t her only passion. “I’m actually very multi-dimensional!” she exclaims, waving a hand in the air. She is one of India’s foremost bridge players and will represent her country at the World Bridge Games in Buenos Aires this year.

I bring the conversation back to the future of her collection. “For the moment it is funded by the foundation, but there will be an endowment. I can’t be here for ever, and I can’t leave it in hands where it’s not going to serve: we will make sure it will be very, very professional.”

‘The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998’ runs to January 5, barbican.org.uk