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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
National
Bradley Jolly

Residents furious at so many potholes on their street they've named it after them

Neighbours have become so angry with enormous cavities in their road they've nicknamed their street "Pothole Crescent".

Households on Glebe Crescent in Witham, Essex, have had to buy new sets of wheels and tyres due to damage caused by the sinkholes.

Some have even taken painkillers before their bumpy journeys to and from the residential road, where house prices average at around £320,000.

Betty Sheehan, who lives on the road, said: "It's disgusting to see the state of it and it's been like this for at least four years."

The 82-year-old woman says she takes painkillers before her son drives her to and from her home because the potholes aggravate her rheumatoid arthritis.

The busy residential street is riddled with cavities (JOHN McLELLAN)

The residents say the cavities have not been repaired in five years.

It's said Essex County Council, controlled by the Tories since 2001, fixed small potholes earlier this year but these have already opened up again, homeowners say.

And Nicola Moore, 44 and her daughter, Chloe, 19 have recently bought four new tyres for the family car due to the constant bumping over potholes.

"When we recently had some construction work done on the house, the contractor struggled to reach and park on our driveway because of the potholes," Nicola told Mail Online.

(JOHN McLELLAN)

Her neighbour, electrician Terry Collier, 59, said: "The council come out once a year, measure the holes, mark them up for repair, go away again and that's the last you see of them.

"It's a joke, we all pay our council tax in this crescent but nothing ever gets done."

Janet Williams, 75, who also owns a house on the street added: "I have to be really careful when I'm driving my car as it's so easy to damage the wheels and tyres, and Essex County Council binmen have great difficulty moving our wheelie bins to their trucks because the terrible state of the road surface."

Another resident Lisa Cooper said: "The council marked up the road months ago but never came back to fix the holes, and now all their markings have worn away."

Terry Collier, a 59-year-old electrician, blasted the authorities (JOHN McLELLAN)

Victoria Jones, who's lived on the street five years, said: "There were potholes when I moved here, but now there are even more. It's really dreadful."

Victoria, 51, explained several months ago, two council maintenance workers repaired two small cavities.

"It's a joke," she continued, "the one's they'd fixed had opened up again."

Neighbours say the road has endured five years of disrepair (JOHN McLELLAN)
Some drivers say their cars have suffered damaged due to the holes (JOHN McLELLAN)

A councillor with Witham Town Councillor says the road surface is dangerous.

In response to the outpour of anger, Local Town Councillor and Mayor of Witham Susan Ager said: "The roads of Witham are full of dangerous potholes with just a few recently filled in.

"Last year two local Essex County councillors were allowed to nominate 36 potholes to be repaired. A figure so minute in the scale of how many potholes there actually are.

"All I can say is that Essex Highways have been given a large sum of money to rectify potholes."

A spokesperson for Essex Highways said: "We look after 5,000 miles of roads, the equivalent of travelling overland from Chelmsford to Beijing. It is one of the largest road networks in the country, with a mix of urban and rural roads, which each bring their own challenges. When a defect is reported to us, it will be inspected. The defect is then recorded on our risk register and given a risk factor score as described on our website.

"Due to added pressure on already limited resources, we must continue to prioritise our work and fix the higher-risk issues first. Unfortunately, we cannot undertake all works at once. Instead, we will begin with the repairs that require immediate attention because of safety or other wider concerns and then move to more minor repairs to road surfaces or footways."

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