Derbyshire drivers warned of pothole blackspot damaging dozens of cars

Rebecca Williams, of Hallowes Court in Dronfield, says she was one of six drivers to suffer a burst tyre after hitting potholes on Dyche Lane on Saturday and now faces a repair bill she cannot afford and a struggle to keep up her family caring responsibilities.

She said: “I’ve got a completely damaged wheel which will now need to be fully replaced at a cost of more than £300. I get Universal Credit, I don’t have the funds for a new tyre and if I claim on my insurance there will still be an excess charge and my premium will be bumped up.

“I can walk to work if I need to, but had to ask someone else to pick up my daughter from Doncaster and also I am a carer for my nan in Totley and my dad who lives in Chesterfield and has Alzheimer’s. I am now not sure how I’ll be getting to him other than a bus and the buses round here aren’t great either. I have no idea how I’ll take him for appointments.”

Rebecca took to social media to share her frustrations, and was inundated with replies from other drivers with similar stories.

She said: “Dyche Lane has at least five deep holes, with two really big ones. There are problems on Snape Hill, The Avenue lots of the other roads around here too.

“From the responses I got on Facebook, I counted 13 burst tyres in the last week alone. One man had his whole suspension ruined. It’s costing people hundreds of pounds.

“Just tonight a couple heading to Sheffield hit the same pothole as me and got stuck in the middle of the road. It’s a narrow dark road and very dangerous.

“When you’re driving along you’re often having to make a choice between hitting the pothole or almost hitting the cars on the other side of the road just to avoid them. It’s like dodgems. We residents feel it’s only a matter of time before a serious accident happens.”

She added: “The road has been reported dozens of times and claims have been put in to the council for repairs to peoples vehicles. Residents have phoned the police 101 number, emergency numbers for the council and each time nothing seems to be done about it.

“Apparently someone came out on Sunday to fill the holes but I don’t think they’ve properly repaired them. They keep being filled temporarily with grit or something, then people hit them and all the filler comes straight out again within a couple of weeks.”

While Rebecca is intending to seek compensation via Derbyshire County Council’s pothole claims process, she has little confidence it will be approved in a timeframe that would ease her financial situation She said: “There’s a lot of people saying they’ve not got all of their expenses back, and that I shouldn’t hold out much hope for it.”

On Tuesday, February 20, the council issued another open letter to residents on the subject of potholes via its social media channels, acknowledging “there’s lots of anger, upset and frustration over the roads.”

Having previously been dubbed the “pothole county of the UK” the council says it has had 25 teams have been filling more than 2,000 potholes a week since the start of the year, and how they were making efforts to carry out more lasting repairs wherever possible, especially where there are known clusters of damage at particular sites.

A spokesperson for the authority said: “Despite all this, we know the above doesn’t really matter if there are potholes on your journey you’re trying to avoid. Hopefully though it does at least show what we’re doing and that we’ll get to the ones near you as soon as we can.”

They added: “We’ve had a bit of better weather since the start of the year which has enabled more repairs and resurfacing to take place, but continued heavy rain, and recent snowfall in parts of the county, has now led to the further increase in potholes that we’re all seeing. It’s usually about now that we’d expect to see ‘pothole season’, but clearly we’ve sadly been up against it already for several months now.”

When the Derbyshire Times raised Rebecca’s case and wider concerns about Dronfield, the council said it was aware of problems in the area.

The spokesperson said: “We are aware that there has been an issue at Dyche Lane with the condition of the road, likely related to surrounding water drainage issues. We’ve had a number of potholes reported on parts of the road over the past few months which we’ve fixed as soon as we’ve been able to.

“This stretch is due to be partly resurfaced in early April, and we will look to carry out some drainage improvement works at the same time. The works are planned to take place then as better weather is more appropriate for this sort of work. We carried out further repairs here on Sunday, and we will continue to carry out any further safety repairs until the resurfacing takes place.”

They added: “We were sorry to hear that a resident has damaged her car here. Our website has information on how to submit a claim.

“We do have a backlog of claims at the moment, but are working our way through them as soon as we can. Every claim made is judged on its own merits, but we can reassure residents that we do look carefully at every one received.”

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