A hole new set of driving problems

?Motorist Phil Turton is well and truly fed up with stubborn potholes that ref-use to go away on a Black Country road.

No matter how many times workmen come to fill the holes in at Fountain Lane, Coseley, they reappear again just a few weeks later.

Now, after the big freeze, drivers are having to negotiate a road surface that has cracked and crumbled. Phil, a 57-year-old ambulance technician, said: "I've reported it to Dudley Council four or five times. They fixed it but it's what I would call bodging it — they just bunged some asphalt in."

The repair bill for councils across the region has topped £2 million, but motorists are facing bills of their own.

Electrical fitter Paul Cattell, of St Michael's Mount, Stone, has been landed with a £467 bill to repair his Jaguar X-Type, damaged in Wildwood Drive in Stafford at the weekend.

Workmen from Staffordshire County Council have now filled the hole in, but Paul, aged 46, isn't happy that he now faces paying out after Christmas.

Father-of-two Frank Guest, from Wordsley, said he is concerned about his cul-de-sac off Bells Lane in Wordsley.

He said: "There must be four or five of them and some of them are 3ft long."

Darren Friel, a Conservative party campaigner in the East Park ward of Wolverhampton, said: "The bus lanes on either side of the A454 Willenhall Road are in a desperate state."