Pothole backlog will soon be gone, says council

Potholes and the state of Derbyshire's roads were central to the local election campaign

Derbyshire County Council says it is on track to clear its backlog of unrepaired potholes in the next two weeks.

The authority said in April there were 26,000 potholes waiting to be fixed but that figure would drop below 3,000 by mid-October, which it described as a "typical level".

Charlotte Hill, cabinet member for potholes, highways and transport in the council's Reform UK administration, described it as the "result of a team effort".

But the opposition Conservatives, who ran the council until May this year, said the figures were "smoke and mirrors".

Potholes had been one of the key issues in Derbyshire's local election campaign, with some asking if the county was the "pothole capital of England" after figures showed over 90,000 of them had been repaired in 2023.

Hill said the issue had been her "top priority" since she took on the transport brief in May.

She said the number of pothole repair teams had gone up from 22 to 26 and they had mended a total of 26,187 potholes, covering both the backlog and new reports.

What was different, she said, was a focus on long-term repairs.

"We're repairing the potholes properly and we're not going back to them and we're repairing them quickly as well," she said.

There are more pothole repair teams at work now in Derbyshire

Derbyshire's previous adminstration, run by the Conservative party, wrote to residents in February 2024 apologising for the state of the roads.

But Conservative group leader Alex Dale said Reform UK should stop "patting themselves on the back" over the work.

"We tended to fix an average of around 100,000 potholes per year whereas Reform are bragging about fixing 26,000 over a six-month period and that's half the rate," he said.

"I think if you asked any resident out there are the roads any better under Reform you'd straight away get the answer of no."

Councillor Charlotte Hill says pothole repairs had become more efficient

The council also said the number of insurance claims it was receiving due to pothole-related damage was down 72% compared to the same period last year.

But independent garages across Derbyshire were reporting a mixed picture.

Hatton Garage Services manager Claire Grogan said: "Maybe it has got a bit better... we had a real spike a couple of years ago."

Mark Smith, owner of Melbourne Garage, agreed it was better than it used to be but singled out roads near his garage like Swarkestone Bridge and Ingleby Lane as still needing work.

At KAM Servicing in Ambergate, the sales and marketing manager Aryan Bhardwaj insisted "nothing has changed".

He said it had, in fact, seen a recent increase in customers with tyre and wheel rim damage, averaging five customers a week over the past few weeks.