Woman, 75, fills in pothole herself to ‘shame’ council

A pensioner was so fed up with unsightly potholes in her street she filled them in using a bucket, spade and garden rake.
Jenny Paterson, 75, could no longer bear the state of the uneven stretch outside her home on Bridge Street in Halkirk, Caithness, and dedicated three and a half hours to the task, helped by her next door neighbour.
She had been brushing chunks of broken-up road surface off the pavement outside her house when she sized up the potholes and said to herself: “Och, just go for it”.
Paterson said it was a “temporary fill-in” until the road could be repaired properly and hoped it would “shame” Highland council into action.
​“I think what [the council] did was cut a bit out but they never came back and filled it in. I’ve been here four years and it has been like that. It fills up with water. Everybody parks there to go to the shop on the corner, big heavy-duty vehicles, everything,” she told the Daily Record.
​“It has completely eroded away, great big deep potholes which are always full of water, and I’d just had enough.”
Campaigners in Caithness have been highlighting the state of the county’s roads for months.
Plans by Highland council to spend millions on roads and infrastructure were approved by councillors in May.
Paterson began the DIY roadworks despite being medically advised not to do any heavy lifting after having surgery two months ago. “I’m not a person to sit around and do nothing,” she said.
She said the “12ft long crater” outside her house, on the main street in the village, collects water and may be responsible for the dampness on the outside wall of her house.
“My lovely neighbour, Jen MacDonald, next door helped me and the two of us tackled it together. We take pride in our surroundings as does Halkirk as a whole. It’s a beautiful village but [the] council’s not very interested in us, I feel. So it’s up to us.”
Paterson said the state of the roads in the area was “disgraceful”. She added: “It’s a beautiful little village with a great community council but unfortunately all the roads desperately need doing. I can’t fill in every pothole so I filled in mine.”
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Her son, Rory, said she had “just got fed up”. He said: “Halkirk is like everywhere else with potholes. My mum is very house proud and the front of her house is all lovely with plants but they never clean out the gutter. They never sweep the roads here.
“I told her it probably won’t make any difference and she said, ‘I don’t care’. She has evened it out and moved all the grit that collects in the storm drain bit. You can’t tell my mum to slow down. When I found her, she was leaning on the broom like a proper council worker.”
A Highland council spokesman said: “Whilst the council appreciates the concerns around pothole repairs, it is not appropriate for individuals to undertake repairs on the public highway. This raises health and safety concerns for the individuals involved and potentially invalidates the council’s insurance should any claims be made.
“The service is doing all it can to carry out repairs as timeously as possible with the resources available. Potholes or other defects can be reported to the council using the online ‘report a problem’ form.”