AS a local councillor I regularly travel around the ward noting and reporting potholes and poor road surfaces drawn to my attention by residents.

As you can imagine I have been very busy lately and the way things are going I don't think that they are going to improve in the near future.

You may ask what I have based this assumption on. Well, I started today being very impressed by the efficiency of the county council (not a feeling I experience often, I must say) when I noticed that some of the potholes I had reported for repair appeared to have been done.

That was at first glance. Taking a better look, saying they had been repaired was a gross misrepresentation!

The repairs look as if someone has tipped a bucket of tar into the pothole and walked away. A total bodge job and really not worth the effort and most definitely a job that will cost us all more to put right.

I was assured last year by the county council that pothole repairs were going to be approached differently and more long-term in future.

This scheme meant that a square of road surface would be cut from around and including the pothole, it would then be filled in and finished, incorporating it into the existing road surface.

I have only actually seen evidence of this in one particular road but, of course, there may be more.

Why oh why do the county council compound one major failing on our poor road surfaces with more by failing to repair them correctly?

Perhaps someone from the county council will be able to tell us - and soon.

HELEN DYKE Liberal Democrat district councillor Dunlin Drive, Kidderminster