‘FIX A dangerous Oxford road soon or we’ll see you in court.’

That is the ultimatum issued to the county council by a campaigner leading the fight against potholes.

Mark Morrell, widely known on social media as Mr Pothole, took a trip down Kennington Road with the Oxford Mail to see just how bad it really is.

Readers had nominated it as the worst in Oxfordshire after this newspaper invited nominations in March.

Mr Morrell spotted major defects, despite the county council carrying out work nearby last month.

A dangerous crater 36 inches wide, 55 inches long and four inches deep sits next to the Edward Road bus stop.

Mr Morrell said: “If that hole is full of water, you could imagine a cyclist losing control and potentially they could end up in the road, where they could be killed, or if not, they could go into the bus shelter. You can see the risk there.”

Last month Mr Morrell threatened to take legal action if the most serious defects on a road were not fixed – or if work was not planned – within a reasonable time.

It is understood the county council has pencilled major repairs to the road for 2019 or 2020 but Mr Morrell said such a wait would be too long.

He gave the council’s contractor Skanska six or seven out of 10 for their patching along Kennington Road. But he said leaving the pothole by the bus stop left a big and obvious failing that he said would cost about £2,000 to fix properly.

Mr Morrell said: “They’ve done all the patching [further down Kennington Road] but they haven’t picked up on the worst defect. It’s breaking all away from the trench and the council should be all over it.

“They’ve done all this work and they’ve left out the most important part.”

Oxford Mail:

The patchwork of repairs in Kennington Road. Pic: Ed Nix

He has registered a complaint with the council's leader Ian Hudspeth and cabinet member for environment Yvonne Constance. He said he will give the authority 20 working days to complete the work but if it is left, he will issue a Section 56 notice under the Highways Act 1980.

As part of that, a highways authority – in Oxfordshire's case the county council – could be forced to fix problems by magistrates if roads are not deemed to be in a reasonable condition.

While Mr Morrell was inspecting the pothole, a resident came out of her house, across Kennington Road. She had her own story about how the pothole had caused havoc as she drove off her driveway just a day before.

Sandra Bonner said: “I was just coming out and a great 4x4 came past. [The driver] didn’t realise the hole and I was driving out, not thinking that she was going to swerve. She swerved and we nearly had a head-on, so I was hoping something could be done [about the pothole].”

Oxford West and Abingdon MP Layla Moran, whose constituency includes Kennington Road, urged something to be done.

Ms Moran said: “The roads in Oxfordshire are in an atrocious state. They are dangerous to vulnerable road users and I’ve had so many emails about cyclists falling off their bikes or being nearly hit by swerving cars. The county needs to get this under control as a matter of urgency.”

The council has consistently complained that the money it gets from central Government has plummeted over recent years.

It has encouraged residents to register road defects on the FixMyStreet website. But a complaint about the bus stop problem in Kennington Road had been logged last year.

Mr Morrell said he had met cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom last week and she had claimed Government figures showed potholes had reduced by a quarter since 2010.

But he said that was because the cut-off point for potholes has changed and that some potholes are merged together so a few can be counted as one.

Oxford Mail:

A deep pothole in Kennington Road. Pic: Ed Nix

Mr Morrell also said utility companies that complete shoddy resurfacing work should be forced by councils to come back to put it right.

However, the spending power of councils, such as Oxfordshire, have been cut so much that some are reluctant to employ inspectors who would monitor the condition of the roads and direct companies to redo poor patches.

The county council said severe winter weather had caused problems but it has repaired more than 7,000 defects, employing extra staff on top of its own to cope with a backlog.

Spokesman Owen Morton said: “Kennington, like anywhere else in the UK, has defects awaiting attention. We regularly make repairs but more defects develop. Ideally we would be able to resurface roads not just in Kennington but right across the county, but this requires very significant amounts of money.

“However we will be doing more pothole repairs as and when defects develop as well as additional patching work in the summer, when conditions are at their best for asphalt work, as well as investigating whether we can secure resources for more substantial work.”

Just shy of £1m of Government money was given to the county council in February to cope with the problems caused by the freezing weather.

In Abingdon, one particularly persistent pothole has been causing so much trouble that it has earned its own Twitter hashtag. 

The #ockstreethole was mentioned at an Abingdon Town Council meeting last night, after Thames Water repairs failed to fix the leaking pothole.

A Department for Transport spokesman said: 

A DfT spokesperson said: “We are giving local highway authorities in England record levels of pothole funding, over £6bn, to manage and maintain the roads for which they are responsible. This includes £296m through the Pothole Action Fund to help councils fix potholes or stop them from forming in the first place.

“We are also undertaking trials using innovative technology, including fixing cameras to refuse collection vehicles lorries, which will in time ensure defects are identified before potholes are formed.”