A WOKING man has branded Salisbury’s pothole-riddled roads the worst he’s seen and a Salisbury man has claimed £600 from Wiltshire Council for damage to his car as people’s concerns over potholes continue to grow.

Robin Winckworth lives in Woking but regularly travels to Salisbury to do bell ringing at St Martin’s Church.

He was shocked by the state of Salisbury’s roads when he visited last week.

He said: “I couldn’t believe my eyes, it’s the worst place I’ve seen for potholes, especially near the station.”

Mr Winckworth said he actually fell and hurt his arm because of a pothole in the pedestrian crossing near the train station and that on Exeter Street the road is so uneven you lose your balance crossing it.

“The council don’t seem to do anything about it,” he said. “I’ve never seen a place with so many holes.

“If anyone goes over them on a bike, they will be over the handlebars.

“Someone’s going to get killed before long.”

Steve Parsons from Salisbury hit a pothole eight inches deep in Salisbury’s Central car park, near LA Fitness, about two weeks ago and it caused £600-worth of damage to the bodywork of his Peugeot 106.

The pothole has now been filled in, but Mr Parsons has received a letter from the council confirming that a cheque is being sent to reimburse him for the damage caused but “without admission of liability”.

He said: “It was just starting to get dark, I was driving along and all of a sudden I was in a great big hole. They’re not repairing it properly, that’s the most annoying part. They don’t replace it properly, they just fill it.”

A group has been set up on the social networking website Facebook, called ‘Fix our potholes in Salisbury’ – and more than 2,200 disgruntled people have now joined.

On the wall of the group many people have said that the city’s potholes are causing serious and expensive damage to their vehicles and most feel that the council is ignoring their calls for something to be done.

A Wiltshire Council spokesman said: “We are aware of concerns about the road surfaces in Salisbury, which is why we are planning to deal with many of them as a priority.

“In the next month we propose to carry out surfacing and major patching work in Fisherton Street, St John’s Street, Cranebridge Road and Salt Lane, as well as at the Exeter Street/St Ann Street/North Walk and New Street/Ivy Street/Catherine Street junctions. We also propose to do surfacing work in New Canal in June.”

The long-term strategy for improving the roads in the Salisbury area has been to concentrate initially on the main routes into and out of the city. In recent years we have carried out major surfacing work on Castle Road, Devizes Road and Churchfields Road, with work currently underway on the A338 at Downton.

Cllr Dick Tonge, the member responsible for highways, said the additional £750,000 made available for highway maintenance in 2010/11, combined with the current year’s funding, is allowing the council to carry out substantial surfacing in the city centre.