I SEE that Devon County Council has set up a community potholers group, which provides training for local volunteers, who are subsequently permitted to repair potholes as they appear in their local street or patch. They can act at an intervention level, which patches repairs long before the county council would take action.

We are all aware of roads where the early stages of potholes are appearing. Wiltshire Council is trying to maintain thousands of miles of roads while also trying to catch up on a historic backlog of road repairs caused by under-investment two decades ago. The job is clearly huge and perhaps if we involved volunteers we could help deal with the smaller problems and let Wiltshire get on with the major repairs which impact on road safety.

Accordingly to Devon County Council, the cost of a community participant repairing each pothole (after training and provision of equipment/materials) is £4 per pothole. This is compared to £35 per pothole if the council send someone out. Not to mention the speed of response, by which time the size of these potholes has increased!

It would seem to me that this would be a good scheme to investigate locally, particularly given the success it has been in Devon, and the fact that there is this existing scheme that we can replicate and develop to suit ourselves.

Gavin Barrett

Salisbury