Bere Ferrers Parish Council is taking gripes about the state of the roads around Bere Alston to the very top of the county council ­–— amid complaints of being ‘ignored by Exeter’.

Matters have come to a head over a deep pothole in the centre of Bere Alston in which two people have fallen, including one woman who broke her ankle and suffered bruising on her face.

Parish council chairman Cllr Peter Crozier told the parish council, at their meeting on Tuesday last week, that she had been advised to put in a civil claim for damages.

Cllr Crozier added that he had written to the ‘very top’ – the new chief executive of Devon County Council – claiming the parish is being ignored by the highways department.

He said: ‘I have written on behalf of the council to Devon County Council over the lack of action over highways, because we had a great big pothole in Fore Street and they didn’t do anything for two weeks and two members of the public were injured and they wil be putting in personal injury claims.’

He added that one woman who had fallen in a pothole in Fore Street had broken her ankle as well as sustaining other injuries. The county council had now carried out a rudimentary repair but Cllr Crozier said ‘they just chucked some tarmac in, it was very unprofessional’.

He added; ‘The letter is addressed to the Devon County Council chief executive and the head of highways is copied in. We have a new chief executive at Devon County Council and she knows she has problems down here and she needs to get her teeth stuck into these issues.’

The potholes in question are outside Mansbridge Balment on Fore Street.

Cllr Ralph Maycock added: ‘The potholes in Cornwall Street are [also] terrible. Previously, if we highlighted a pothole in the parish it was fixed in four days.’

As the parish snow warden, Cllr Maycock reported that he was also in discussions with the county council highways department over problems with gritting roads in the parish.

He said: ‘The road at The Down suffers from the worst icing in the parish, it is at the top of Bere Alston, has the Devon Air Ambulance landing site and it is a main route into the village. It is one of the primary HGV routes into the village but highways won’t even make a site visit.’

He said he was also in the process of getting more grit bins for the parish, but only half of those asked for had been forthcoming. ‘Everything to do with highways is a battle and a battle against a brick wall basically,’ he said.

Cllr Brian Lamb, vice chair of the council, said: ‘There seems to be a negligent philosophy towards this peninsula by Exeter. It is quite obvious that no officer had visited before they gave us that bizarre reply.’  A DCC spokesperson said: ‘All public reports are assessed to determine the risk to highway users and appropriate response time, which can range from two hours to 28 days. For instance, a pothole was reported in Fore Street, Bere Alston on March 13, and it was assessed before being repaired on March 20. On March 28 we investigated a pothole but found that there were no defects that required action and there are currently two pothole reports awaiting assessment in Bere Alston by April 4.

‘Since April last year we have repaired around 37 defects in Bere Alston, five of which were on the main road, and we assessed a further 18. Our winter gritting routes consist of 20 per cent of the county’s roads. These roads carry nearly 80 per cent of the traffic and are reviewed annually. The Down has been added to this list for review.’