A man has called sending four people in two lorries to plug a small pothole ‘a waste of money’.
David Booker, a Shoreham resident, said a council team worked on the narrow pothole – which was part of a large crack running along the town's Sullington Way – for about half an hour on Thursday, June 13. When they left, a gap about 50cm long had been filled.
Mr Booker, 76, said: “I thought what a waste of money. I found it amazing. There were four blokes and all they had done was that small section when you can see all the holes in the road and a part that’s sunken at least six inches deep.”
Residents can report potholes via the West Sussex County Council’s website. A council spokesman said over the past year 429 had been reported across the whole of Shoreham, with only one report about Sullington Way.
Potholes less than 40mm deep are not repaired but are reviewed when the road is inspected. The aim is to repair potholes between 40mm and 100mm deep and 150mm wide within 28 days, and those greater than 100mm deep and 150mm wide within five working days.
The spokesman added: “A [council] inspector identified two defects on Sullington Way that had reached the level which required repair. On Thursday, June 13, our contractors completed the works that we instructed them to do and they had no responsibility to fill other defects that were not identified by [the council] or did not meet the level required for repair.
“It may have appeared that there was a large number of resources working on these defects, but the contractors will on occasion move en mass to sites for their own efficiency. Sullington Way would not have been the only site they visited that day.
“Our planned delivery team are currently scheduling a date to inspect the road to consider a future surface layer treatment, but we are unable to comment further on an expected delivery date.”
Data from the county council states that, in 2022/2023, 1,030 claims for damage were made due to potholes, 60 per cent of which were successful. A total of £23,865 was paid to those claimants. In the same period, £2,615,029 was spent on 31,636 repairs – abound £83 per pothole.
Earlier this year concerns were raised after potholes outside a school in Shoreham reportedly caused "near-miss accidents".
Adur and Worthing's then MP Tim Loughton said in April the road outside Shoreham Academy in Kingston Lane was in a "bad" state.
He said at the time: "Nothing infuriates people more at the moment than the state of the road and potholes.
"Some parents came to see me the other day because when cars have their headlights on, they come along, bounce up and down (on the potholes) and people think they are flashing their lights to let them go when they're not, so we've had some near-miss accidents."
The potholes have since been fixed.
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