Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Pothole repairs ‘the work of a five-year-old’ in crater-hit street
One homeowner claims KCC said street would not be resurfaced before 2051
Patchwork repairs on a potholeridden road likened to the surface of the moon could have been done by a five-year-old, claim neighbours.
Huge craters have long blighted Herne Avenue in Herne Bay, sparking repeated complaints to Kent Highways about the state of the street.
Residents were given some hope when contractors visited to carry out repairs, but the “quick fix” has left them more than a little unimpressed.
John Robinson, a retired surveyor who worked for Lambeth Council, lives in the road with his wife, Pauline.
“I would like to see how long it took them to do it and how much it cost,” he said.
“The road looks like the surface of the moon and the pavements are just as bad. It’s very dangerous just walking down the road.
“The whole thing is a bodge job. It’d be more efficient just to resurface the whole road rather than just patching up the holes, given that there are so many.
“A neighbour says he was told by KCC we weren’t scheduled in until 2051, so I’ll be long-gone by then.”
Commenting on one particularly bad repair, he added: “It’s all well and good just slapping some tarmac in there, but it’s raised about two inches above the road.
“It’s like having a new speed bump to slow us all down. A fiveyear-old could have done it.”
Fellow resident Jason Thackaberry says he has spent hundreds of pounds repairing damage to cars in his 24 years living in the street.
The 48-year-old Sky engineer said: “The road is absolutely shocking. It’s a real mess and the patchwork repairs they’ve done are a joke. They may as well not have bothered.
“Everybody who comes here talks about the state of the road. They really need to resurface it completely, and quickly.
“The surface is so bad you can even hear the vibrations inside the house.”
A Kent County Council spokesman said: “Herne Avenue is a concrete road , which we acknowledge is in need of capital investment – as is the case for many roads across the county.
“With the limited and decreasing funds KCC has available for highway maintenance and repair, it has to carefully prioritise the works it does to ensure the most benefit to Kent’s road network overall.
“To do this we consider the condition of the road alongside factors such as the cost of the works, the amount and type of traffic it carries, its importance to Kent’s economy and any safety hazards that may be present.
“When looking at all these factors, we could not prioritise any resurfacing works on Herne Avenue over other sites in Kent that we are doing this year. Nor do we have any plans to carry out any such works in the next few years.
“The recent repairs have been carried out to ensure that the road remains safe for all users but we acknowledge that repairs on concrete roads are difficult to carry out and can look unsightly.
“We will continue to regularly inspect all the county’s roads for hazards, and will monitor this road on a monthly basis.”