Residents of a Hampshire town have been left flabbergasted upon finding that the council had painted over a string of potholes rather than repairing them.
When Avenue Road in Lymington reopened, locals noticed that the potholes simply had two yellow lines painted over the top of them. The move was described as “absolute madness” by one man, who stated the road has at least half a dozen potholes.
Jack Davies, Mayor of Lymington, said it genuinely blew his mind. He had previously emailed the highway authority about the road’s condition and had told the county council that it would need resurfacing before being painted.
In response to the incident, a Hampshire County Council spokesperson said: “Road repairs will be taking place in Avenue Road, Lymington, next week and the yellow lines will be replaced over the completed repairs. The original line painting was part of priority road safety work being carried out in the local community.”
This comes during Britain’s long-running pothole crisis. Just a few days earlier, it was reported that a 75-year-old resident in a Scottish town attempted to fill in the potholes on her road herself.
Jenny Paterson in Halkirk used gardening tools to fill in a “12-foot-long crater” outside her home after becoming tired of her area’s “disgraceful” road conditions. The pensioner spent three and a half hours levelling out the surface.
Ms Paterson said: “My lovely neighbour, Jen MacDonald, next door, helped me and the two of us tackled it together – we take pride in our surroundings as does Halkirk as a whole. It’s a beautiful village but Caithness council’s not very interested in us I feel. So it’s up to us. We both got slightly carried away at that stage and tried to level out the area to keep the water away.
“It’s a beautiful little village with a great community council but unfortunately all the roads desperately need doing. I can’t fill in every pothole so I filled in mine.”
However, the Highland Council, which is responsible for the area, claimed: “This raises health and safety concerns for the individuals involved and potentially invalidates the council’s insurance should any claims be made. The service is doing all it can to carry out repairs as timeously as possible with the resources available.”
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