State of our streets awards

Living Streets, the charity that campaigns for more walking, is holding its ''State of our streets awards". You can submit as many entries of the best and worst examples of streets you use. You need to upload a still or video image of the street, and an explanation of why you are nominating it.

Go to www.livingstreets.org.uk/sosawards for more details. The closing date is 2 November.

Potholes of Barking

Potholes on my regular routes are something like old friends. One gets to know well what they look like over the years, and watches how they increase in size as time goes by. The analogy ends there though.

Pothole one (feat. Coke Can) in this blog is acoss the Road from The Brittania (as was) in Church Road. I thought I had reported this before, but have reported it just now for good measure.

http://www.fixmystreet.com/report/188968#update_165738

Pothole 2 (feat. beer can) is the worst, or second worse, of the series of defects in Salisbury Avenue on a signposted route from Salisbury Avenue.

In both cases I managed to upload the wrong photos at the first attempt. Apologies.

http://www.fixmystreet.com/report/159324#update_165739

The potholes of Barking

I thought I'd revisit some potholes to see - don't laugh - whether the council had done anything about them. See for yourself!

The pothole gardener

This chap was featured in The Metro free newspaper. He puts plants in potholes that he finds around London. Brilliant take on guerilla gardening

http://thepotholegardener.com/

Potholes

Concerned by the lack of meaningful action on potholes that I have reported, I asked the council how they determined which potholes to do something about and which not to. The response is a cause for great concern. Intriguingly some holes I had reported acquired some white paint marking them out for repair, presumably. This is the only visible action on site for these long standing reports.

One part of it is about a particular pothole. I was sent an e-mail exchange in which it appears someone had immediately classified the pothole as "not dangerous". On what basis or with what authority did they do this? The highways department replied to their colleague (in Customer Services?) that as the holes are not dangerous they will only monitor them. It appears that the holes were arbitrarily classified as not dangerous and then actual decisions built on this.

The second part of the reply was a spreadsheet categorising footway and road defects into 5 response priorities, depending on criteria like size and location. None of the priority categories is labelled 'dangerous', though there is text about dangerous faults under the priority 1. The sheet does not say what the response should be - only how quick.

Road (carriageway) defects can apparently only be priority 2 - no higher, no lower. The text in the priority 2 column says "Potholes with a depth greater than 40mm and extending more than 200mm in any direction", so we know that potholes of this size should be 'responded to' in 24 hours, but the spreadsheet is utterly silent on smaller potholes and other response times. Apparently no pothole qualifies for being repaired as part of planned works, even.

I have asked the questions.