RESURFACING has been completed of a Watchet road which had been described as possibly the most potholed in England.
The elderly residents of Whitehall, including centenarian Sheila Nicholls, had been complaining to Somerset Council for more than two years.
Now, the road, which provides access to an 11-mile stretch of the West Somerset Mineral Line walking route, has been newly tarmacked - but by a national newspaper, not by the council.
The Daily Mail took pity on the pensioners after the Free Press highlighted their plight in February and hired a tarmacking gang to travel from Surrey to resurface the lane while the council refused to do so.
Somerset Cllr Rosemary Woods, who lives in Watchet and represents the town on the unitary council, said the Mail had brought shame on the county authority.
Cllr Woods said she first took up the concerns of residents and raised the state of Whitehall with the council in 2022 after it was designated an alternative route for the South West Coast Path.
She told the Free Press: “But absolutely nothing happened. They ignored the residents.
“I got nowhere at all with them, but I am used to getting nowhere with the county. I am sorry to put it that way, but that is the truth.”
Cllr Woods said the council had claimed it was not its responsibility to do the repairs because it was used as a public path and not a road, even though the legal deeds to residents’ homes stated Whitehall was an adopted road which was to be maintained at the expense of the local authority.
She said: “I say good on the Mail for doing the work the council should have done themselves.”
One Whitehall resident, 79-year-old Brian Pankhurst, said: “We are really pleased the Mail did this, they did a good job and did all the potholes, but it shows the council up, does it not?”
Mr Pankhurst previously told how several people had been injured over the years in falls caused by the potholes, some of which were like bomb craters, with a number of them hospitalised.