The Roads Authorities and Utilities Committee, which examines the standard of roadworks undertaken by utility companies and local councils across Scotland, found that 26% of all road repairs failed the grade.

But there was a wide variation in the performance of the various utility companies, which dig up roads to make repairs to their pipes and cables and are responsible for adequately patching the road up afterwards.

Virgin Media and BT were jointly named and shamed for having the worst performance of all: 37% of road repairs undertaken by them were judged substandard.

The state of the roads has been a hot topic in Scotland for nine years, since a nationwide survey found 56% of all road repairs to be below acceptable standards.

Despite an improvement, John Gooday, the Scottish Road Works Commissioner, says it’s still not good enough and is now threatening to fine offending councils or utility companies up to £50,000 if they don’t finish their roadworks to an acceptable standard.

A Virgin Media spokeswoman claimed that its road repairs programme had shown improvement in recent years and promised that the company would continue to work on further improvements.

A BT spokesman added: “We met with the commissioner recently, told him that we accept his results and we have improvement programmes in place to turn our performance around.”