Potholes? Never Heard Of Her: A Celebration Of Britain's Most Inspired Council Spending Decisions

It takes a special kind of courage to look a constituent in the eye — metaphorically, of course, because councillors are rarely available in person — and explain that, while yes, the road outside their house has resembled the surface of the moon since 2019, the borough simply cannot afford to do anything about it. Not when there are priorities.

Fortunately, Britain's local councils have risen magnificently to the challenge of spending what little money they have on things that are, by any measurable standard, absolutely baffling. As a public service, Nonsense Watch UK has compiled a definitive ranking of the most awe-inspiring acts of fiscal creativity witnessed this year. Please hold your applause until the end.

9. The Twin-Town Diplomatic Mission To A City Nobody Has Heard Of

Kicking off our celebration of excellence: the twin-town awayday. Several councils this year dispatched small delegations of senior officers to their European partner cities — Kleinburg-am-See, or somewhere equally obscure in the Dordogne — for what official minutes describe as "cultural exchange and strategic dialogue."

The delegations stayed in mid-range hotels for four nights, attended a civic dinner, posed for photographs outside a town hall, and returned home having exchanged approximately nothing of strategic value. The total bill, including business-class rail travel because economy is "not conducive to productive pre-meeting preparation," came to sums that could have resurfaced a cul-de-sac. Bravo. International relations matter.

8. The Pronoun Awareness Workshop (External Facilitators, Naturally)

One must not attempt this sort of thing in-house. That would be amateurish. No, the correct approach — adopted by at least three councils we identified this year — is to bring in a specialist consultancy at a day rate that would make a City lawyer blush, to deliver a half-day workshop on preferred pronouns to staff who, by all accounts, were already perfectly civil to one another.

The workshops reportedly included a "reflective breakout session" and a laminated resource pack. The laminated resource pack is the detail that really sings. Nothing says we have money to burn quite like lamination.

7. The Mindfulness Garden Nobody Asked For

Tucked behind the civic centre in one Midlands borough, a patch of previously unremarkable scrubland has been transformed — at considerable expense — into a "contemplative wellness space" featuring gravel, a small water feature that stopped working in March, and three wooden benches engraved with inspirational quotes.

The council's communications team issued a press release describing it as "a sanctuary for residents experiencing the pressures of modern life." The residents experiencing the pressure of a broken suspension on the A-road outside their estate were not mentioned. The garden has been visited, according to freedom of information data, by eleven people. One of them was a dog.

6. Rebranding The Council Itself

Some councils this year decided that their fundamental problem was not a crumbling infrastructure or a hollowed-out social care budget, but rather an insufficiently dynamic logo. The solution: a six-figure rebrand, complete with a new font, a revised colour palette described in the brief as "optimistic teal," and a new strapline that manages to say absolutely nothing while using the words "community," "future," and "together" in close proximity.

The old logo, which had served perfectly well since 1987, was retired with no ceremony. The potholes remain, but they are now technically located within a forward-thinking borough, which is something.

5. The Inclusion Mural (Bespoke, Naturally)

Commissioned from a local artist — or, in several cases, a not-especially-local artist whose day rate necessitated a supplementary budget request — the inclusion mural has become the statement piece of choice for councils wishing to demonstrate values without demonstrating competence.

This year's finest examples featured abstract human figures in a range of colours not found in nature, radiating outward from a central sun, above slogans like Every Voice Counts painted on the wall of a building in which the public consultation process had recently been quietly scrapped. The murals are, to be fair, quite colourful. They brighten up the street. The street they're on still has a pothole the size of a paddling pool, but the aesthetic experience of approaching it has been considerably enhanced.

4. The Staff Wellbeing Retreat

In fairness to councils, their employees are under enormous pressure. The pressure, for instance, of explaining to journalists why the bins haven't been collected for three weeks. This is stressful work, and it demands investment.

Enter: the staff wellbeing day. Held at a hired venue rather than council premises ("the environment needs to feel neutral and restorative"), featuring a yoga session, a catered lunch, and an afternoon workshop on "resilience in the public sector." Attendance was, sources suggest, not entirely voluntary. The catering budget alone exceeded what it would have cost to hire an additional refuse collector for a month. But you can't put a price on resilience. Councils have certainly tried not to.

3. Consulting On The Consultation Process

A personal favourite. At least two councils this year spent money commissioning external reviews of how they conduct public consultations — because residents had complained that previous consultations felt tokenistic and ignored. The review, conducted over several months at considerable cost, concluded that consultations should be more meaningful and better publicised. This finding was published on page 47 of a PDF on the council website. No further action has been identified.

2. The Digital Transformation Strategy That Didn't Transform Anything

Every council worth its salt has a Digital Transformation Strategy. It will be a glossy document, possibly with an accompanying microsite, outlining how the council will "harness technology to deliver seamless citizen experiences" by a target date that has already passed.

In practice, the main legacy of this year's digital transformation investment appears to be a chatbot on the council website that cannot answer questions about bin collections and redirects all pothole enquiries to a form that no longer works on mobile. The strategy document itself is excellent, though. Really visionary stuff. Lots of diagrams.

1. Literally Just Not Fixing The Potholes

And here we arrive at the crowning achievement: the studied, almost philosophical commitment to simply not repairing the roads. Not as a consequence of the above spending — or not only — but as a kind of governing principle. A bold statement that the physical fabric of the place is, ultimately, someone else's problem.

Councils across England have this year successfully argued that road maintenance budgets must be cut while simultaneously finding money for every item on this list. It requires a genuinely impressive cognitive flexibility to hold both positions at once. The potholes, meanwhile, are thriving. Unbothered. Expanding quietly into the verges. Living their best lives.

We salute them. And the councils that made them possible.

Kevin Sparks is a staff writer at Nonsense Watch UK. He has submitted six pothole reports to his local council since January. Four received automated responses. One was marked 'resolved.' The pothole remains.