https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/04/crashed-bike-pothole-cost-cycling

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I was lucky. Last week, I was cycling downhill when I hit a pothole. The front wheel folded into an infinity symbol. I went over the handlebars and, with no time to put my hands out, landed on my face. My helmet and glasses took most of the impact. I emerged, remarkably, with just a few cuts and bruises.

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Austerity – which leaves our potholes, alongside many other gaps in public provision, unfilled – does not save money. On the contrary, it costs us a fortune. What the rich might save in taxes, the rest must pay over and over again.

False economies abound. For example, the government may at last be persuaded to remove the Tories’ vicious, Malthusian two-child benefit cap. But what many people have failed to grasp is that behind it stands another brick wall: the household benefits cap. If families now receive money for a third child, it could push them past the household limit, and they’ll be scarcely better off than before. This household cap has extreme and perverse consequences. It ensures that rents, even in the social sector, are almost everywhere unaffordable to the families affected, most of which are headed by lone parents. The result is that they are thrown into temporary accommodation, which local authorities must provide at far greater expense: roughly £2.3bn a year. Being forced into temporary accommodation also curtails adults’ employment opportunities and children’s performance at school, and generates great suffering, which can translate into physical and mental health problems, which of course means further economic impacts.

In 2019, a parliamentary committee called on the government to “conduct a full cost benefit analysis of the benefit cap”. The government rejected the call, but said it would explore the possibility in future. I checked with the Department for Work and Pensions – it still hasn’t happened.

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