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More than £400,000 is being spent on repairing potholes in Bristol and the surrounding area after extreme weather left thousands of roads damaged.

Bristol City Council say they've put aside £70,000 for fixing potholes created when ice and snow hit the South West earlier this year.  They say so far this year they've repaired 450 potholes.

South Gloucesteshire Council say their repair campaign, which started on 25th January, has fixed over 1,200 potholes compared with 3,200 over the whole of 2009.  They say it was possible after they re-prioritised the existing highways maintenance budget and invested £350,000 to address the situation. They also say they've increased the number of staff dedicated to tackling potholes by 50 percent. 

Heather Goddard is executive member for communities which includes street care. We asked her if she thinks residents will be pleased with the action the council are taking: "Hopefully they have seen we have, infact, six teams out all the time since the 25th January, working even on Saturdays repairing our potholes. So I'm hoping this will give them the confidence that we are taking this seriously."

We went on to ask Heather Goddard if she thinks the council will invest the same kind of money for repairs when we see this kind of extreme weather again: "It's so important to people and so important that people don't damage their cars, I would imagine that we would put that money in again because roads are an investment for our residents."

South Gloucestershire council told us some of the roads recently resurfaced are Fouracre Road in Downend and Westerleigh Road, Yate, as well as Sandringham Road and parts of Ratcliffe Drive in Stoke Gifford, with a number of other busy routes in line for improvement soon.

We'd like to know about your experiences with potholes. Have you found it easy to report problems to your local council? Have the potholes been repaired quickly and effectively or are you still waiting for resurfacing work to happen?

Let us know by leaving your comment on the form below.

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