Derbyshire councillor decorates potholes to highlight shoddy roads – and slams ‘complete failure’ from council

Councillor Ross Shipman, who represents Tupton Ward for the Liberal Democrats on North East Derbyshire District Council, has taken to decorating potholes waiting to be repaired with miniature work crews.

These include Redfern Street and Queen Victoria Road in Tupton – along with Greenway in Wingerworth.

Coun Shipman criticised the council for undertaking temporary repairs that have collapsed again within a matter of weeks – meaning that the roads around Wingerworth and Tupton remain in poor condition.

“If local authorities repair potholes with paper mache, it’s a waste of time. Repairs should have longevity, not something that lasts two weeks which generates another pothole report.

“Earlier this week, it was reported Derbyshire County Council (DCC) had the most amount of potholes reported of any council in the country, and it will be no surprise to see why.

“This issue has been a complete failure for the Conservatives nationally and locally for failing to make the right investments in our road network and keep them in a fit state.”

A report published on April 17 in the Daily Mail ranked Derbyshire as the worst county in England for the number of potholes reported in the financial year 2021/22.

A series of Freedom of Information requests submitted by the Liberal Democrat’s found that 90,596 potholes were reported to DCC. This figure was 23,000 more than Lancashire, which was listed as the second worst region in the UK.

In a recent cabinet meeting, Councillor Barry Lewis, DCC leader, denied that the authority was failing to manage its roads. He said that headlines ranking the county among the worst in the UK were “crazy” – and claimed that “we record our stats very differently to other local authorities.”

He added that if the statistics were ‘like for like’, Derbyshire would be one of the best authorities for pothole repairs.

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A DCC spokesperson said: “One of our inspectors has been out and looked at all the streets mentioned. A pothole reported on Greenway has already been fixed, and there are no others that we feel give us cause for concern. There are parts of some of the roads that could do with some resurfacing and we will get to these as our budgets allow.

“At this time of the year we do tend to see the worst damage to our roads because of the winter weather, but we do have extra resources going into fixing potholes.

“Since the beginning of this year we have had up to 30 gangs repairing potholes and during this time we have fixed almost 36,000 potholes.

“We are just going into the third year of a £120m programme to improve our roads and in the coming year we’ll be improving more than 400 roads through resurfacing, surface dressing or micro-asphalting.

“We are also pleased to confirm that we will be receiving £4.2m from central government in the recent budget to support us in this work. This will particularly help us address challenges on the minor roads which make up so much of Derbyshire’s highways network.”