Bolton: Hundreds of potholes to be repaired after concerns

It comes as ward councillors Cllr Les Webb, Cllr James Moller, and Cllr Mudasir Dean, launched a Facebook campaign on the Harwood Notice Board known as ‘Pothole Purge’, after recognising the issue.

The campaign was launched between Christmas and New Year last year, and local councillors say it has started well.                

This resulted in many local residents reporting potholes on their own streets, which was followed up by a visit from the councillors who photographed and reported them to the council.

Rose Lea junction to Hough Fold Way (Image: Public)

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Cllr Dean said “We would wish to thank the Streetcare division for their proactiveness in the works program we are looking at other areas in the near future to improve the lives of our residents in many areas of our ward.

“Most importantly we wish to thank residents that have highlighted where the locations were.

“The next stage will be to investigate what we can do with pavements and open spaces”.

Wards were allocated £50k as part of the council budget for 2023 to be spent on priorities for each ward to benefit the residents, and like other wards in the borough the repair of many of the potholes was prioritised.

Seaford Road, Bradshaw (Image: Public)

Cllr Dean says that the average repair cost across the whole of Bolton is approximately £75 per pothole, which is why Bradshaw councillors agreed that spending should be released for potholes.

Cllr Webb said: “We ran a public consultation to report the damage on Bradshaw and Harwood Notice Board Facebook site, which attracted over 100 likes, comments, and receipt of pictures in two batches.

“We were back out again on the weekend of January 6, and highlighted and reported another 13 sites with over 50 separate potholes now in the system for repair with the ward of Bradshaw.”

It comes as, Round Our Way – a climate media organisation – carried out a Freedom of Information at the end of last year, to understand how climate change is impacting the scale of Britain’s pothole problem.

National analysis by Round Our Way (Image: Round Our Way)Data found that the number of potholes reported in 2021 in Bolton was 6,146, compared to 6,939 in 2022.

From January to November last year 5,484 potholes were reported, but this is not a complete year.

Some potholes may have been reported more than once in the data, as well as not all reported potholes being confirmed as potholes.

When estimating for 2023’s December data, and for areas where there was no comparable data, this year’s British pothole figure reaches over 1.2 million.

An earlier analysis by RAC, using a similar methodology, found pothole numbers had been increasing across the UK in the years prior to Round Our Way’s analysis.

If you have a story and something you would like to highlight in the community, please email me at jasmine.jackson@newsquest.co.uk or DM me on Twitter @JournoJasmine.