Devon turns to volunteers to repair potholes

Potholes are the blight of many a motorist and cyclist's journey but now a team of volunteers are taking to Devon's roads to fix them.

Devon County Council has admitted it doesn't have enough to repair all our roads. So to help with the problem - as part of a trial - community road wardens will now carry out some of the repairs.

One of those taking part is retiree Richard Tift, he told us why he wanted to be a volunteer road warden:

The Community Road warden scheme was launched 18 months ago - it allows members of the community to do a wide range of Highway work on minor roads. Richard and Andy are among some of the first volunteers to have been trained and insured to fix small potholes.

Devon has the largest road network of any highway authority in the country and it costs more than £60million a year to maintain their current condition.

This year though it received only around £45million in Government funding for maintenance work.

Yet the council says Devon's maintenance backlog is around £758million.

We asked Councillor Stuart Hughes if volunteers were really the answer:

The material they use is called Instarmac - it can be used in all weathers and dries almost instantly. The idea is volunteers patch up small potholes on minor roads, so that the main, paid council highways teams can focus their attentions on larger potholes, primarily on our A and B roads.

Now 59 volunteers have had the same free training as Richard and Andy and if this trial is successful it could be rolled out to all Community Road Wardens.