A pair of well-known road safety advocates have raised alarms that road conditions in a Sussex town have reached a critical juncture.
The Worthing-based Pothole Patrol, headed by seasoned campaigners Martin McCabe and Bob Smytherman, has dispatched correspondence to Councillor Joy Dennis, who serves as the cabinet member responsible for highways and transport at West Sussex County Council, urging immediate and sustained restoration work on several principal routes and problem areas throughout the town.
The letter brings forward worries expressed by local inhabitants regarding hazardous road surfaces and condemns what it describes as inadequate temporary solutions.
Mr McCabe, who previously served as a councillor, expressed that local residents have grown weary of substandard repair work and roads that fail to meet safety standards. He indicated that the situation has moved beyond isolated road defects to encompass an entire network that is deteriorating. The campaigners emphasised the need for a comprehensive strategy to permanently address Worthing’s road infrastructure challenges.
While the collective acknowledged recent restoration work carried out on Bruce Avenue and Tarring Road, they drew attention to what they perceive as fundamental shortcomings in maintenance practices and maintained that piecemeal fixes cannot adequately resolve the underlying problems.
This action follows the council’s recent announcement that it would allocate in excess of £60 million toward highway enhancement schemes for 2026 and 2027. Mr McCabe stated that given such substantial investment, there should be no justification for continued deterioration.
The organisation noted that residents will anticipate seeing concrete, durable enhancements resulting from this funding commitment.
The two advocates recently commemorated the eighth anniversary of a road defect in Pevensey Garden, which has since undergone full resurfacing. They indicated their intention to persist in reporting road defects through established channels, though they stressed that the magnitude of the problem demands decisive direction and a thorough response from the council.
The county council intends to deploy the funding to execute 230 projects during the coming twelve months, encompassing 130 schemes centred on carriageway repairs and surface replacement.
The council recently characterised the volume of road defects emerging this winter as exceptionally elevated, with in excess of 7,000 reported during the previous month, compared to 2,300 recorded in February of the preceding year.