A COUNTY councillor was given a rough ride as she was cross-questioned about delays to road potholes in Tavistock.

Cllr Debo Sellis, Devon member for Tavistock, faced the frustration and annoyance of Tavistock Town Council members on Tuesday (May 30) when the full council debated the vexed issue.

All councillors said the subject most brought up during canvassing during the May local elections and at any time this year, has been the problem of road damage and the length of time taken to repair potholes.

Cllr Sellis, answered questions as a guest at the meeting. She is on the county’s West Devon highways committee, which oversees the highways department responsible for the road network.

Town councillors said they appreciated Cllr Sellis was not responsible for the state of the roads and did not expect her to solve the issue. But they ask that she helps change the road repairs and maintenance system, with improvements ranging from programming in work to methods of mending and maintaining holes and the road surface. Even when potholes were repaired, the standard was not good enough, while county council scheduling rules appeared to leave newly repaired potholes next to unmended holes, said town councillors.

Cllr Sellis said Devon had 8,000 miles of mostly rural roads and that Tavistock’s road surfaces and winter damage was not as bad as some areas: ‘However, I’m not saying there isn’t a bad problem here. I have every sympathy for everyone on the issue of potholes. Residents mentioned two major issues during the local election, one was the small boats bringing migrants. The other was potholes. I understand residents are fed up with the state of the roads.

‘The county council’s team maintenance contractor has continued to deploy additional resources to pothole repairs and is focussed on the safety of the travelling public. This means the backlog of pothole repairs and surface patching will be tackled later in the financial year (up to April).’

She promised repairs were scheduled for the following Tavistock roads: Pixon Lane, Callington Road, Lumburn Bends, Drake’s Statue, Fore Street and patching along the Gulworthy to Bere Alston route.Cllr Anne Johnson said: ‘The quality of the county council repairs certainly needs improving, not only to the surface and potholes, but to the culverts and other drainage. They often need redoing after maintenance and repairs. Just patching with tarmac is a poor remedy and often lifts off.’ Cllr Mandy Ewings said: ‘To often I have seen the silly situation where work teams don’t repair all the potholes and surface in one place because the holes are not all on the work schedule and they then waste time and money coming back to the same spot. The whole system needs looking at.’