'Repairs not fit for purpose' - says residents as roads in Derbyshire 'peppered with potholes'

As spells of cold and wet weather have battered Derbyshire roads for the last few months, Derbyshire County Council has promised to solve the issue and fix the potholes as soon as possible.

The council deployed extra ‘road gangs’ with additional equipment who ‘are out dealing with as many potholes as they can as quickly as they can – and working round the clock.’

As a part of their efforts, today (January 9) the council’s contractors repaired a ‘large and deep’ pothole at Town End in Bolsover, which has caused a lot of safety concerns for drivers.

But as soon as residents noticed the repairs earlier today, they took to social media to voice their concerns over quality of the council’s work.

Resident Carl Siddall, emailed Councillor Charlotte Cupit, Cabinet Member for Highways Assets and Transport, to complain about the quality of the repairs calling it ‘disgusting'.

Carl told the Derbyshire Times: “The repairs completed are not fit for purpose. The hole is filled in, but for how long? There are parts around this that are not leveled, I think this will soon break up again.

"Many roads in and around Bolsover are peppered with potholes. Quite a lot seem to stem from work that's been carried out by various private companies. How do you get potholes with straight lines that look square? It's about time private companies picked up any remedial work costs, why should it come out of the public purse? Repair work needs to be signed off, even if it is randomly done, it's far too easy to spend money when it's not yours.”

Derbyshire County Council and Councillor Cupit have been approached for a commnent.

The council is currently asking residents for input on their Capital Works program. Any Derbyshire resident who would like to suggest which roads need further works up to full resurfacing, is asked to get in touch with their local county councillor or MP as soon as possible.

A spokesperson for Derbyshire County Council said: “This repair was done as a reactive repair to stop any vehicle damage or injury to any highway users. This area of road is on our capital programme to be fully resurfaced over the next few months, which is why this repair was done just to make the area safe until then.

“We have put extra resources into our pothole repairs teams and are fixing hundreds of potholes a day. We have also started a planned additional road patching programme to carry out larger patch resurfacing of many hotspot areas to try to prevent potholes where we can.”