Transport Secretary’s car towed away after hitting ‘crater’ pothole

The Transport Secretary’s car had to be towed after it hit a pothole.

Heidi Alexander was driving her Mini Cooper on the B4437 outside Burford in Oxfordshire last month as she travelled back to her Swindon South constituency from a Labour fundraising event.

She told The Sun: “I joked to my husband that I thought that the astronauts on Artemis II might have seen a similar-size crater when they were slingshotting around the Moon last week.”

Pictures show her green car being loaded on to an AA recovery truck after the incident.

Oxfordshire has been allocated £34 million to tackle potholes this year.

It was estimated last month that the cost of bringing pothole-plagued local roads in England and Wales up to scratch had risen to a record £18.6 billion.

English councils risk losing up to a third of their funding to fix potholes if they fail to demonstrate they are working effectively, the Department for Transport announced this week.

Some £525 million of the £1.6 billion funding for local roads maintenance in the 2026/27 financial year will be held back unless authorities prove they are spending the money appropriately.