Have you seen a man fill a pothole lately? 

No, it is a lost art. Yet it is not difficult.

Having maintained the farm road over half a century, I know whereof I speak. 

For method (A) you just need a wheelbarrow with a brush and a shovel. Brush any loose material out of the pothole. For perfection pour a little tar in the bottom. Then fill the pothole with fresh asphalt and tamp it down just proud of the road surface. Gravity and traffic will do the rest. A £12 bag of asphalt will fill two or three potholes, provided they have not been left to grow dangerously large, and you may allow ten minutes each. Let’s say £12 per pothole for labour and materials, to be generous. 

The alternative method (B) preferred by Hampshire County Council (HCC) is to send a highways inspector to mark out large rectangles of one or two square metres on the road surface surrounding and including each pothole. Then hire a contractor to cut out the rectangles and re-lay new tarmac with a road roller. This does a nice job and is good money for the contractor, but in most cases it is not necessary, takes too long, and we can’t afford it. 

HCC claim to be spending £21m per annum to repair 181,000 potholes and ‘road defects’. At £116 per pothole that is some ten times the cost of method (A).

Michael Arnison-Newgass,
Gambledown Farm,
Sherfield English

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