RESIDENTS of a potholed street will next weekend resurface it themselves because the council refuses to do it.

Householders on Albany Road in Blackburn have spent five years asking their local authority to repair the carriageway outside their homes.

They describe it as ‘like a third world war zone’.

Blackburn with Darwen Council has refused as the road is ‘unadopted’ and not legally its responsibility to maintain.

They asked the 21 householders to find £133,000 to repair the road before the council would take over its upkeep.

Father-of-two Ibrahim Mall has now purchased stone chippings and organised a working party to resurface it.

He said: “It is ridiculous we are having to resurface our own road at our own expense. It looks like a third world war zone not a street in a modern British town. I thought this was what we paid our council tax for.

“We cannot raise £133,000 so we raised £4,000 and paid a contractor £3,500 in 2017 to resurface it. He did 70 per cent and then disappeared.

"We have used the rest to buy stone chippings and next weekend will finish the repair job ourselves.”

Mr Mall said anger increased last year on reading about the council resurfacing East Park Avenue defying residents’ wishes to leave it alone.

He said: “Why spend money there and not on our road where it’s wanted?”

Cllr Phil Riley, council highways boss, said they could not afford to maintain all the borough’s unadopted roads. He said the residents could follow the example of nearby Wellfield Road where householders paid £75,000 for the road to be repaired and then it was adopted by the council.

Cllr Riley said: “There are literally hundreds of unadopted roads in the borough and we cannot find the millions of pounds needed to adopt them all. They need to be maintained to a certain standard. We have no objection to residents repairing it themselves.”

Alan Haworth, from East Park Road, said: “The council made a terrible mess of our street. It should have spent the money on Albany Road where residents want it not here where we didn’t.”