Your Letters

Bigger issue of potholes

Sir, — I have recently returned from Cape Town, South Africa, where I rode a motorcycle with a local friend around the Cape.

The roads were excellent — as we have found all over the world, including the Alps, which spend most of the time buried in freezing snow and ice.

In the UK I cannot ride my motorcycle when wet as you cannot see the potholes.

Last year, I nearly had a crash after hitting a pothole which catapulted me out of the seat.

I have had many email exchanges with Oxfordshire County Council, the highways authority, and what appears to be evident is a broken system where money is spent avoiding paying compensation.

I have made multiple applications to the council under the Freedom of Information laws and had my last two requests ignored.

What I have found:

1. The potholes are identified by two people driving along spotting them or by members of the public reporting them via the Fix My Street portal.

2. The potholes are then logged using a handheld (phone) GPS device. These are accurate to 3m so useless for this application. No calibration of equipment is carried out or logged.

3.Outside Shiplake Memorial Hall is a plethora of potholes and where my last tyre burst happened. This section of road has never been repaired properly and spends a lot of time under water.

4. The council has outsourced claims to Maven PSR, who appear to have outsourced to Crawford Legal Services with the sole intent of avoiding compensations claims using taxpayers’ money.

5. Maven and Crawford use the most unbelievable legal jargon to avoid payment such as “A claimant must prove that an actionable defect has been in place for at least six months prior to the accident”. How on earth can anyone find this information? Certainly not using the council’s awful, inaccurate logging system.

6. I had one claim accepted a few years ago but statistics show that since the council has outsourced to legal companies very few, if any, compensation claims are paid.

7. I logged a pothole on Fix My Street a few months ago — a deep, nasty one in Sonning Common Lane down from Coppid Hall. The pothole was repaired in a couple of weeks. The repair has failed and is evidently claiming victims again. So, having been repaired, you cannot claim on this pothole for more than six months.

8. The council spent, so I am led to believe, £8 million on 20mph signage. Madness when the roads are so poor.

9. My Freedom of Information request to find out how much the council has spent using legal services to avoid compensation payments has not been answered. I imagine it is hundreds of thousands.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I can only imagine how awful people’s journeys have become and the cost to the road user must be incredible.

I have bought a Land Rover Defender to cope with the awful roads as my old car’s alloy wheels were no match for the horrendous roads we now have to navigate. — Yours faithfully,

John Goldsmith

Dunsden Green

A spokesman for Oxfordshire County Council responded: “The council has 13 teams out repairing the roads each day, working within the funding the council has available. In 2023, we repaired 39,633 potholes around the county.

“However, even with the extra funding made available last year, councils have for some time been significantly underfunded by the Government for highway maintenance work.

“A national survey for the Asphalt Industry Alliance said that council highway teams in England and Wales received only around two thirds of what they needed from the government for highway maintenance and that £14 billion was needed to fix the backlog of repairs.

“Every council in the country could do with more assistance from the Government in doing this work but there is no shortage of effort or intent locally to do a good job.

“The period straight after winter is always the most difficult and we allocate resources with that in mind.

“In the weather conditions that we have experienced, with freezing temperatures and heavy rainfall, potholes can appear very quickly. We prioritise those which pose the greatest safety concerns.

“The vast majority — 97 per cent — are now cut square, joint sealed, filled and compacted to undertake a first time permanent fix.

“We encourage the public to report potholes using www.fixmystreet.com , preferably with photographs. The reporters will be able to see if the defects have been reported previously, as existing reports will be visible.

“This also enables officers to react more quickly to reports in their specific areas and arrange repairs in line with the council’s policy.

“People can also log on to the council’s website ( www.oxfordshire.gov.uk) to access Fix My Street and report potholes. If the pothole is particularly dangerous, you can call 0345 310 1111.

“Fix My Street reports are generally investigated within 10 days of being raised.

“The level of response is dependent on the location, size and risk the pothole poses to public safety.

“This may result in the pothole either being repaired within 28 days if it is identified as a safety risk, being repaired as part of other programmed works or being monitored as part of the routine inspections programme as the risk to public safety is not sufficient to merit immediate action.

“If reported as a hazardous or dangerous defect, the repair will generally be a two-hour or 24-hour repair.”

Wonderful response

This is a follow-up to the letter that I sent to the Henley Standard and to some of the local MPs in December.

I would like to show my appreciation and express my emotions for those who have done their best to help our Sophie and her family.

Since we moved to Sonning Common from London we have realised that we are surrounded not only by extremely nice areas with amazing scenery but by a very friendly and extremely helpful and supportive community and I want to thank all and each one of them separately.

I was considering myself and my husband lucky for moving here and when our son Alekos McGarry and his family moved from Leeds to Tilehurst we were so happy.

Unfortunately, 10 months later, on June 5, 2023, we found out about Sophie, his then partner and now wife (since June 18), being diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer.

Under stressful conditions, the couple and their little one were homeless for eight months and although Reading Borough Council had placed them in temporary accommodation it was uncomfortable, insufficient, impractical and not easily accessible for our Sophie and her family to live in, which made her stay most of the time with us in Sonning Common.

In my despair, I wrote the letter explaining the situation, the health problem and the couple’s needs and I sent it to a number of MPs and councillors.

At the time all my friends and relatives told me it wouldn’t get me anywhere … but it did!

Finally, I got two replies and I want to thank them both from the bottom of my heart.

Firstly, Matt Rodda, MP for Reading East, and his caseworker Eleanor Bonham for their efforts in approaching Reading Borough Council to try to find appropriate accommodation for our kids in Reading. Unfortunately, we had no results from the council in terms of permanent accommodation. Secondly, Leigh Rawlins, South Oxfordshire district councillor for Sonning Common, who advised me to talk to Thom Gaunt, housing needs team leader at South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District councils.

Mr Gaunt and his team have been wonderful. They were quick and efficient and also helpful, diligent and proactive.

After all the necessary papers were submitted and the application was successful, our kids were so lucky to find and bid on a house in our neighbourhood and we hope that they will move in this week as the house is in need of painting and decoration and we need to buy all white goods etc. — Yours faithfully,

Aleka Meliot

Pages Orchard, Sonning Common

Musical memorial

Editor, — I was very sad to read the front-page headline “Poppy appeal thief jailed” (Standard, February 23).

I thought your readers might like to know of a forthcoming opportunity to boost the funds and support the work of the Royal British Legion in our local area as well as commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

On Saturday, April 6, Henley Choral Society will be performing a concert at the Great Hall, University of Reading, where all donations will go to the Royal British Legion.

Many of your readers may know that June 6, 2024 marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the largest naval, air and land operation in history.

Marking these commemorations, our musical director Richard Harker has chosen a programme of works by British composers written between 1916 and 1945 on the themes of peace, service and sacrifice.

Christine Cunnold (soprano), Ross Ramgobin (baritone), the London Collective Orchestra and the 100-strong chorus will perform Vaughan Williams’s haunting Dona Nobis Pacem (“Grant us peace”), Elgar’s rousing The Spirit of England and the beautiful Lo, the Full, Final Sacrifice by Finzi.

There are concession tickets for under-25s, full-time students, those in receipt of income or disability benefit, veterans and current members of the services.

We hope that many of your readers will be able to join us for what promises to be an exceptionally stirring and moving occasion and to also provide much-needed donations to support the work of the Royal British Legion.

For more information and tickets, visit www.henley
choralsociety.org.uk — Yours faithfully,

Dr Tim Wilson

Chair, Henley Choral Society

Keep walking and writing

I just wanted to say how much I enjoy Vincent Ruane’s descriptions of his walks as I know the area well but am unable to continue walking nowadays as arthritis is a problem.

I was impressed by his resourcefulness in using the no 25 bus to get from Caversham to Peppard when he did not have alternative transport as it is an hourly service now and can be unreliable due to driver shortages.

The bus does have the advantage of having the terminus at a pub, however.

Please keep walking and reporting, Vincent. — Yours faithfully,

Ann Acres

Peppard Road, Emmer Green

Blossom explained

Sir, -— Over the years I have noticed some confusion as to the identity of the first white blossoms to appear around Henley in early spring.

These trees make a beautiful display, particularly along the main road from Henley to Reading.

They also form part of a hedge along Berkshire Road, which in late summer often has a fine crop of yellow and black plums. These trees are known as bullace plums.

In early April blackthorn comes into flower, often a time for a cold spell known as the blackthorn winter.

In May the third white blossom appears. This tree is hawthorn, also called May.

Interestingly, these flowers appear after the leaves, unlike the bullace plum and blackthorn. — Yours faithfully,

Andrew Hawkins

Henley tree warden, Berkshire Road, Henley

Well done to toad patrol

Sir, — Visiting a friend in Sonning Common last week, I was delighted to find the report by Professor John Sumpter, of the Henley Toad Patrol, detailing how the efforts of the volunteers have supported a record-breaking 10,750 toads in crossing the road so far this season (Standard, March 1).

I was even more impressed, as I prepared to light the fire with the previous week’s issue of the Standard, to find that Prof Sumpter regularly contributes articles to ensure that your readers are kept up to date.

In this time of concern over declining standards of journalism and the deleterious impact of social media on the attention span of us all, I would like to congratulate both Prof Sumpter for his updates and the Standard for giving space to such an excellent example of local journalism — a kind which is, sadly, much too rare nowadays.

I should, of course, also thank all of the volunteers of the Henley Toad Patrol for their work, which sounds at times very uncomfortable as they scoop up toads in the middle of the night in freezing temperatures. Very well done! — Yours faithfully,

Finlay McNicol

Urmston, Manchester

Are demos productive?

Sir, — Instead of simply repeating the predictable “I believe everyone has the right to demonstrate” (yes, we all agree), those thinking of joining a demonstration, should themselves: “Is what I am about to do helpful and likely to be productive?” — Yours faithfully,

Paul Willson

Pound Lane, Sonning