Cambridgeshire garages report spike in windscreen damage

Stefan Smalley said customers told him screens were being increasingly damaged by road debris

Windscreen companies in Cambridgeshire said there had been a spike in business, believed to be down to the poor state of the roads.

Stefan Smalley, a Wisbech technician, said local roads were "terrible" with potholes exacerbated by recent weather.

Autoglass said 44% of drivers in the UK with a chip or a crack in their windscreen in the past 12 months believed potholes were the cause.

The county council has recently signed off a £40m list of road repairs.

"The roads are terrible at the minute, the weather has not helped either," said Mr Smalley, a windscreen technician for 25 years.

"Rainwater gets under the patched-up surface, HGVs, buses and tractors go over them and they break up again.

"The debris is like shrapnel from a bomb. If it is thrown up at 60mph, and you are going at a similar speed, that is a big impact on the glass.

"I have seen a dramatic 35% increase since last Christmas of stone chip screen damage."

Large chips have to be repaired - or the windscreens replaced - for vehicles to pass their MOTs

Elsewhere, Jamie Macrae from Silver Shield windscreens in St Ives, said: "It seems that more and more people are reporting stone chips on the windscreens each year.

"When comparing stone chips this winter to previous years, 2023-24 is up 31.9% on last year.

"It is very rare that a windscreen needs replacing due to vandalism or accidents, the vast majority are stone damage."

Technician Stefan Smalley said there were many potholed roads around the Fens

The RAC said last year it attended nearly 30,000 pothole-related breakdowns over the course of the year, up by a third (33%) on 2022.

Its head of policy, Simon Williams, said: "Local councils have been cash-strapped for years due to lower road maintenance budgets, causing roads across the country to fall into disrepair and leaving drivers fighting for compensation when their vehicles are inevitably damaged."

A list of roads and footpaths to be prioritised for maintenance across Cambridgeshire has been recently approved by the county council.

They include spending £552,000 on resurfacing part of Newmarket Road, Cambridge, £420,000 on resurfacing roads in an estate in Wisbech and £1,241,400 improving the "worst sections" of the carriageway of Chatteris Road in Somersham.

The chair of its highways and transport committee, Alex Beckett, said the £40m it had allocated was "double pretty much what we would normally spend", but added it was "never going to be enough to do everything".