Letter: New Forest road becoming a traffic hazard due to dangerous potholes

I AM writing to express my concern that Bashley Common Road, along with many other roads in the local area, is now becoming a traffic hazard due to the sheer number of dangerous potholes.

As you know, potholes are extremely damaging to car suspensions and tyres. However, my main concern is that if this situation continues, it’s not if there’s going to be a serious accident but when, with cyclists and motorcyclists really in the firing line.

It would be very interesting to find out how many office workers they have in the highways department, as I would imagine they currently outnumber the amount of maintenance staff repairing the roads, which is a worrying thought.

The temporary traffic lights on the A35 at Holmsley, that are diverting motorists away from a damaged water drain, are a perfect example of this inefficiency as they have now been in place for weeks.

Rather than sending a couple of workers to complete a 30-minute job, they have instead painted a white line around the problem and left it to cause utter chaos.

It seems that the highways department don’t want anything to do with these issues with our roads and are showing a complete lack of responsibility, with their multitude of excuses and couldn’t-care-less attitude. It makes me wonder what it would take to get the council to start working on the roads the way they used to?

Perhaps, if we could go back to the old days with less bureaucracy and more action, it would lead to more roads being fixed and safer, happier motorists.

In my opinion, the highways department should openly publish the costings of the administration of the highways against the cost of repairs to the roads so that we can see how much of the funding is being poorly allocated. I eagerly await these figures!

Sammy Miller MBE,

New Milton