A BLACKBURN biker has called on the council to repair potholes that are blighting motorists' journeys along Roman Road.

Keith Walton, 82, lives with his wife Patricia in Monmouth Road, and regularly has to contend with the potholes when he is out driving his 35-year-old Honda 400/4.

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He has reported the issues to Blackburn Council, but so far nothing has been done to tackle the problem.

The retired painter and decorator said: "They're beyond the Punchbowl at Pot House when you're making your way to Darwen, one is seven or eight feet in length.

"The potholes have been there for months, I've rang maintenance and nobody has got back to me.

"They're getting bigger and bigger and the trouble is, what's it going to be like when the ice and snow comes?

"It's been like this for months and months."

Mr Walton said there is also no warning to motorists that the potholes are there.

He said: "It's a busy road, there's more of them coming as you go, and there's more people driving on the road.

"They haven't even ringed them with white paint, they could at least give you warning.

"They should put a sign up warning people that they're there."

Mr Walton has called on the council to take urgent action before the potholes cause an accident on the busy road, which leads from Blackburn to Darwen.

He said: "They'll do something about it when someone gets maimed or killed.

"I don't understand why they let things like this go."

A spokesman for Blackburn with Darwen Council said: "We are looking into this matter."

In July last year, Blackburn with Darwen borough council launched a £17.5million scheme to end the borough’s pothole nightmare .

Its executive board authorised will borrowing £6.5 million to help pay for the four-year project to resurface main routes and other roads facing meltdown.

The ‘Network Recovery’ scheme’s aim is that by 2017, the 100 mile backlog of highway repairs will have been dealt with and the 350 mile network will be fit for another 20 years.

A rolling programme of works began with urgent repairs on Whalley Old Road, Whalley New Road and Preston Old Road..

Engineers hope that the situation, where an average of 1,000 potholes considered a safety risk are repaired at a cost of £50,000 every month, leaving hundreds of others untreated, will be ended.

They are confident this will improve the ride for motorists, cyclists and bus passengers and reduce drivers car repair bills and save cash on road repairs in the future.

It will also ‘dramatically reduce’ the number of cavities needing filling in future.

It uses the latest resurfacing technology to deal with the backlog of maintenance to make sure that roads are in good condition and to remove potholes .

They include the use of ‘micro-asphalt’, jet filling of potholes and new surfacing compounds being developed with local firms.

Rather than concentrating on emergency repairs , it is a targeted programme to resurface the defective areas of our roads and seal others against water penetration and the freezing of that water which are the major cause of potholes and other highway surface problems.

In the long run, it will reduce the £2.5 million a year the borough spends each year on highway maintenance .

The council allocated £10.1 million for the project comprising of the £6.5 million borrowing and specific government grants for major highways work.

One top of that there is be the £2.5 million normally spent on road maintenance annually.