Isle of Wight Potholes

by millage

31 May 2010

The roads on the Isle of Wight have been in a bad state for several years now, but since the bad weather we have had over the winter (Jan/Feb 2010) problems have got much worse.

Some of the roads on the island have more potholes than road and have become nothing more than dirt tracks. Although the Council has now begun a major repair strategy (only since the beginning of May), a lot of the roads that are especially bad have been ignored.

About 4 weeks ago I noticed that I had a slow puncture in one of my front tyres. My husband pumped it back up every 1/2 days but after 2 weeks we went along to the local ATS Tyres to get what we thought was a punture repaired.

Unfortunately, the tyre was perfectly ok but my alloy wheel had a large crack in it which the tyre fitter said was probably caused by potholes.

Obviously, I could not recall when or where the damage occurred but I had been driving my car, only on the island, for over 3 months on horrendous roads. So I got in touch with the Isle of Wight Council and they immediately sent me a claim form. They wanted to know the exact pothole that had caused the damage and exactly when it had happened and as I could not give this information they have declined my claim and said that the tyre fitter was lying. I cannot be the only person who has had damage done to their car and not realised in until later?

Even on the road that I live on, which is the main route from Sandown to Newport, there were potholes that have only just now been repaired, one of which you had to drive on the other side of the road to pass (as this is a busy road it was virtually impossible to do that without hitting something coming the other way). Even now there are many potholes and some that were repaired have returned.


I am now having to try to find a cheap replacement for an alloy wheel which cost over £500