Toys in potholes campaign helped speed up repairs, says resident

A man who gained national attention for putting mini toys in local potholes to raise awareness says his tactics have helped get "record numbers" of repairs.

Tim Webb, 66, said he began his campaign to highlight the problem of potholes to Bromley Council in south-east London.

He began arranging rubber ducks and toy diggers in potholes in the Orpington area at the start of the year.

He posted pictures of the scenes on FixMyStreet and Facebook groups.

Mr Webb told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "There were an awful lot of road defects, including potholes, and I initially wanted to draw attention to the problem and get some action taken."

In May, Bromley Council announced bringing in a second contractor on a temporary basis to tackle potholes in the borough.

The council also said the typical number of potholes needed to be repaired before Christmas each month was 900, but that the harsh winter had increased it to 1,500 monthly jobs.

Nicholas Bennett, the council's executive councillor for transport, highways and road safety, said: "There continues to be industry wide shortages of staff to carry out this important work and there are a number of factors which mean this an issue which is complex to completely resolve."

Mr Webb said that while the council was making a great effort to tackle potholes, there were some areas where this still remained an issue.

The junction between Cray Avenue, Kent Road and Poverest Road currently has 10 separate reports on FixMyStreet regarding potholes or related road defects.

However, Mr Webb said he was "delighted" to see the council had sped up the process of filling in local potholes and believed that his "polite but consistent" campaign might have helped.

"There's far less potholes about than there were say a month, two months or certainly six months ago", he added.

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