Potholes in West Wickham Road

The ongoing saga of the potholes in West Wickham Road continues!!

These potholes are extremely dangerous and have already caused a number of vehicles to be damaged resulting in expensive repairs for the owners.

The last repair to these potholes lasted for barely 24 hours. The underlying cause of the damage (a spring underneath the road allegedly) needs to be addressed to stop this happening in the future.

If you want to put pressure on the CCC Highways Dept. to make speedy, effective repairs, please report the fault on the link below (there were already 75 reports submitted as of 2nd January 2025):

UPDATE

On the 25th February we received an email from one of the caseworkers for our MP, Pippa Heylings, containing a letter from the County Council Head of Highways Maintenance. The letter reads as follows:

Dear Ms Heylings,

Re – Balsham Potholes.

Thank you for your email dated 17 January 2025 regarding the dangerous potholes at the exit from Balsham (West Wickham Road) raised by your constituents. I would like to start this letter by apologising for the delay in our response.

We have carried out repairs to the potholes on this section of road and have also carried out investigations into the drainage system which have confirmed that there is a blocked surface water pipe that goes underneath the carriageway which is fully silted up along with the chamber in the grass verge. We are in the process of arranging for a Temporary Traffic Regulation Order for the repairs to be carried out to this pipe. The drainage works will involve excavating the carriageway and sections of the grass verge to remove the current pipe and replace this with a new length of pipe of approximately 3 metres. We will also carry out jetting of the remainder of the drainage system to make sure that it is fully operational.

These works will then remove the water from the carriageway which will allow for a more substantive repair to be carried out to the potholes at this location.

We have a dedicated team of highway inspectors that inspect in accordance with our Highway Operational Standards (HOS) Highway policies and capital maintenance programme – Cambridgeshire County Council, and any defects which meet our intervention levels will be ordered for repair. Alongside our routine inspectors, we also have 16 Local Highways Officers across the County who continue to investigate and respond to reports made via our report it tool. These reports allow our Local Highways Officers to raise intervention level defects within accordance to our HOS alongside raising any areas that require consideration for larger scale works and treatments with our dedicated Asset management teams.

We encourage the public to report any potholes or highway faults using our online tool. It’s easy to use and flags any faults which have not yet been marked. We would rather have multiple reports of one fault, than none at all
https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/residents/travel-roads-and-parking/roads-andpathways/roadworks-and-faults/.

For insurance claims following an incident on the Highway, a form can be found at this link; Report a highways fault – Cambridgeshire County Council

I will personally review progress on these works and update you further within the next two weeks.

Kind regards,

Oscar
Caseworker for Pippa Heylings MP

Pippa Heylings
Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire