Shredded street: My town's roads are so bad you can eat from them

Fancy having road chippings with your Weetabix? Eating the popular cereal from a pothole is the latest stunt by local campaigner Ben Thornbury designed to highlight the problem of potholes on the roads in and around his home town of Malmesbury, Wiltshire. Two years ago, when he created a crazy golf course from potholes on the town's high street and invited locals to play, three weeks later the council resurfaced the entire road. Coincidence or not, buoyed by that success Thornbury followed it up with more pothole golf, this time on St Mary's Street, elsewhere in the town. Last year, he moved onto pothole fishing on a road close to Malmesbury's famous abbey. A short while later, the council patched up the potholes - but by early 2025 they had reappeared, so the council resurfaced it. In July, Thornbury came up with the idea of eating Weetabix from a pothole, a stunt he performed in Somerford Keynes, a nearby village. Most recently, in August, he painted some of Malmesbury's potholes with St George's Crosses. Reflecting on his stunts, Thornbury says: "I won't do the Weetabix one again - milk and gravel isn't very nice - and the council has warned that painting potholes is vandalism and won't help bring repairs forward. But pothole golf was great fun and I think made a difference. People queued to have a go and drivers tooted their car horns in support. A local councillor told me he believed the stunts encouraged Wiltshire Council to resurface the roads." The council denies this. Leader Ian Thorn told Autocar: "We have invested significant extra funds into repairing and maintaining Wiltshire's roads over the past two years. This is making a real difference in all parts of the county, including Malmesbury. "This work has been planned for several years and is not the result of any campaign. This hard work is paying off, as in the first six months of this year there has been a 44% fall in the number of potholes reported to us compared with the same period in 2024. We will continue to work hard to improve Wiltshire's roads." Still, Thornbury's efforts at least resonated with other council offices, as well as with aggrieved motorists nationwide. For example, Joe Harris, cabinet member for highways at Gloucestershire County Council, has invited him to Cirencester to see how the council repairs potholes. Meanwhile, towns and villages across the UK have asked him to publicise their potholes. It's quite an achievement for a young chap who is only just learning to drive. I've arranged to meet Thornbury at his home in a quiet street just outside Malmesbury town centre. The 20-year-old has just completed a three-year college course in digital support services and is currently undertaking a retail apprenticeship. He's a modest lad but clearly a determined one who isn't afraid to make his point. This much is obvious when, without a second's thought, he agrees to recreate his pothole fishing stunt on a nearby road, pushing his props - which include a stuffed pike and a watering can for topping up the pothole - there in a wheelbarrow. "I got the idea for the pothole stunts from an internet meme of a chap playing golf in potholes,' says Thornbury. "I manage Malmesbury's Facebook page. It has 17,000 members and lots of them were posting about all the potholes in the town, saying they had damaged their cars. I thought recreating the pothole golf meme for real would show the council it had a serious problem. "The success of the stunts has made me want to do more local campaigning. Where people take to social media to complain, I like to act." As autumn takes hold, the nation's motorists could do with more people like Thornbury highlighting the problem of potholes and poor roads maintenance. It is estimated that there are more than one million potholes on UK roads. The RAC says that between April and June it experienced a surge in the number of pothole-related vehicle breakdowns, with patrols responding to 9% more incidents than during the same period last year. It attributed the increase to colder-than-average weather in early 2025 accelerating pothole formation. Vehicles suffered broken shock absorbers and suspension springs and bent wheels - damage valued at around £600 per vehicle. In December last year, the government announced highways authorities across England would receive £1.6 billion in funding for filling potholes and repairing roads. A quarter of the funding councils receive will be dependent on them publishing annual reports detailing how many potholes they have identified and repaired. Transport secretary Heidi Alexander said: "The public deserves to know how their councils are improving their local roads, which is why they will have to show progress or risk losing funding." According to Department for Transport figures, West Northamptonshire has the worst road surfaces in the UK, with around 83% of roads needing improvement. Derbyshire ranks second with the worst A-roads and motorways. It looks like Thornbury and his wheelbarrow are going to be kept busy. How to claim for pothole damage and appeal a decision How to claim - If it's safe to do so, take photographs and measurements of the pothole and, if possible, gather witness statements. Obtain an invoice for the repair to your vehicle. Check the FixMyStreet app to see if the pothole has already been reported. - Report the incident to the relevant council. However, the council can't be held liable for a defect it wasn't aware of, either because it hasn't been reported or it hasn't been picked up by its own inspection and maintenance teams. This is a popular defence. - If it thinks you have a case, the council will send you a report form to complete. Include the supporting material you have gathered. How to appeal - Around three-quarters of claims for pothole damage to vehicles are rejected by councils each year. Not every council has a formal appeals process, but you can still ask any to review its decision. - Again, you have to be able to prove the council has been negligent. Submit a freedom of information request asking, for example, how many reports of the pothole the council had received and how many claims it has accepted or rejected. If you believe the council knew about the defect but failed to repair it in time and it still rejects your claim, you can pursue the matter through a small claims court.