Mayor leads call for West Street to be repaired now

The County Council is committed to a programme of improvements on West Street, which carries traffic from the A158 into the Market Place.

However, that work will not take place until September or October and town mayor Coun Brian Burbidge is leading the campaign for action to be taken now.

Coun Burbidge told the News: “The condition of West Street is an absolute disgrace and remedial action is needed now.

“What they (the County Council) should do is close the road, rip up it up and re-surface the whole lot in one fell swoop.

“If we have to wait until September - and that’s the council’s date not ours - I hate to think what state West Street will be in.

”It’s a busy road. It’s a bus route and emergency vehicles use it.

“There are so many potholes safety must be an issue.

“It’s not a great advert for the town.”

Coun Burbidge said he was ‘one of many people’ who had reported the condition of West Street to the county council.

He accepted the county council had carried out repairs but said the potholes had often opened up again.

Coun Burbidge is among several town councillors who have criticised the standard of repairs - and the system for reporting potholes.

Several residents backed Coun Burbidge, including Andrew Neal who labelled West Street as ‘appalling.’

He added: “The road surface has deteriorated at a rate that is unmatched by the pathetic and wasteful ‘pothole filling’ done by LCC Highways.

“The road will not last until its planned resurfacing in Sept/Oct.

“There is a 100 metres of surface from Clarence House to Friskneys that needs to be dug out and resurfaced correctly.

“Any further bodging is a waste of public money.”

Andrew Ratcliffe, local highways manager for LCC, said: “We’re aware of the problems on West Street and are planning to resurface the road later this year. “We appreciate residents would like this to happen sooner rather than later but it will be an extensive job and needs to be done when the roads are quieter to minimise the disruption.

“Unfortunately, the Easter holidays didn’t give us a large enough window.

“In the meantime, we’ll continue to monitor the road to ensure it’s safe to use.

“We’ve already carried out a number of repairs but new potholes have formed elsewhere along the route

“We will get these and any other potholes that develop repaired but it’s an incredibly busy time for us so it’s difficult to give a firm timescale for that work.”

Ironically, the calls to repair West Street come as several residents hit out at the county council for re-surfacing the car park in their own depot off Hemingby Lane - and not repairing potholes nearby.