Transport officials have been left with an even bigger financial headache than expected after the deep freeze increased the number of potholes on county roads by 75 per cent.

Oxfordshire County Council has been forced to pump in an extra £200,000 on top of the £1m it had already pledged for emergency road repairs after the extent of the damage to Oxfordshire’s ice-ravaged roads emerged.

The aftermath of Oxfordshire’s harshest winter in more than 30 years has left the council facing an uphill battle to repair the county’s roads.

It has already received 5,300 reports of potholes – labelled “defects” – on county roads in the first ten weeks of the year.

That number has risen by three-quarters compared to the 3,000 defects reported over the same time period last year.

Damage caused to the county’s roads has led the council to draft in an extra eight repair crews, to take the number of teams working round-the-clock to 20.

The authority has admitted it would have to repair some of the potholes twice as it is now sending out workmen to do emergency temporary fixes before carrying out longer-term repairs this summer.

Councillor Rodney Rose, cabinet member for transport implementation, said: “The county’s roads have been affected very, very badly, but we are doing all we can to fill in these potholes.

“It’s certainly the worst affected I have seen the roads driving around and we are now having to fill in an unprecedented number of potholes.

“Some are being filled in on a temporary basis with a more permanent road repair set to happen in the summer.

“There is a ‘firefighting’ aspect to this and if we get notification of a dangerous pothole we want to respond to that as soon as possible, rather than doing the longer-term maintenance.

“When you have got a pothole that is 7in or 8in deep and a vehicle could hit it and go off the road and injure someone, that pothole has got to take priority.”

Earlier this year, motorists from across the county described the damage caused to Oxfordshire’s roads by the deep freeze as the worst in living memory.

However, since the start of the year, 20 council repair crews have fixed 3,100 potholes, a 56 per cent rise on the 1,980 potholes repaired over the same time period in 2009, when the council had 12 teams making repairs.

By the end of this month, the council expects to have spent half of its £1.2m pothole fixing fund as part of a total spend of £4m on repairing the county’s roads over the financial year. In the previous financial year, it spent £2.5m on road repairs.