‘My city is littered with potholes but this is the biggest I’ve ever seen’

Road repairs will be addressed in the new budget after residents raised concerns about journeys on damaged roads

The leader of a city council has pledged to address road repairs as a priority in the new council budget as frustrations grow, with one person saying he’s found the biggest pothole he’s ever seen in the city.

Councillor Dimitri Batrouni told full council this week the condition of the roads in Newport have been a “hot topic on social media” and the new budget will “recognise that”. It comes as Conservative campaigners slammed potholes in the city, with campaigner Jake Enea claiming Newport was “littered” with potholes and claiming he’d found the biggest pothole he’d ever seen at Pillmawr Road which connects Caerleon to Malpas.

Posing for a photograph beside a large pothole beside the road, he said: “Newport is currently littered with potholes and serious road surface damage, but the pothole (at Pillmawr Road) is the biggest I have seen anywhere. Its location near the very top of the lane makes it exceptionally dangerous.”

In a council meeting on Wednesday Cllr Batrouni defended the Labour council’s recent resurfacing work, telling councillors the £6.6 million invested this financial year was the highest the council had spent in a decade. “Do we need more? Absolutely,” he said. “We are resolute [and] the roads are a priority.”

Independent Cllr Mark Howells said residents in the Lliswerry ward “continue to raise serious concerns about the condition of Somerton Road, Cromwell Road and Corporation Road, all of which serve schools, bus routes, pedestrian crossings and high footfall areas”.

He asked where the roads were placed on a priority list for repairs. Cllr Batrouni said he had driven along Cromwell Road earlier that day and “I know how bad it is – I can understand residents’ fury”. He explained that repair scheduling could be influenced by subcontractors’ availability, but reassured the Lliswerry representative that “those roads are on the priority list”.

Cllr Howells also urged the council’s leader to dispel constituents’ worries that repair prioritisation could be influenced by the political affiliations of their local representatives. “I’m not making that claim, but that’s a claim our constituents have made directly to us – that they’re suffering as a result of being an independent ward,” he said.

“I can happily say that on the record,” responded Cllr Batrouni. “The officers and cabinet member are meticulous about making sure it’s depoliticised.”

Bishton and Langstone Conservative councillor William Routley said his constituents were dealing with “horrendous” journeys through the ward’s lanes which he argued had “moved past the point of pathetic patch-and-mend repairs”.

Cllr Rhian Howells, the cabinet member in charge of roads, noted that the ward’s Whitebrook Lane and Gilfach Lane were resurfaced earlier in the financial year, and the A48 Chepstow Road “crucially also received surface treatment works”.

She said officers were “assessing damage caused by the recent cold spell across the city”, and “day-to-day repair work carries on” alongside the resurfacing programme.

In response to Cllr Routley’s criticisms of the council’s record, Cllr Howells stated it was “impossible to undo 14 years of underfunding from Westminster in 18 months”. The £6.6 million investment this year “means 55 roads across the city have been or will be resurfaced”, she added.

Cllr Matthew Evans voiced concerns about the timeframe to replace damaged street signs, alleging that one sign he reported last March had still not been fixed.

Cllr Howells said she would investigate the issue and that the council had managed to clear “almost half” of a maintenance backlog by replacing 175 signs this year.