URGENT repairs are needed on a busy road used as a rat-run before loose stones cause an accident, a resident has claimed.

Geoffrey Birch said loose gulley stones are being dislodged outside his home in Tetbuy Drive, Warndon, Worcester, when heavy vehicles such as buses drive over them.

He said he has reported the problem, which affects the road near the junctions of Haresfield Close and Randwick Drive, to Worcestershire County Council every day for the last week but has not had any response.

"When a vehicle goes over them they are standing up about four-and-a-half inches above the road level," he said. "I reported this to the county council last Tuesday and I have been phoning them every day since then, but nothing has been done whatsoever.

"The thing is, if anyone smashes their car on any of the gulley stones they are going to put in a claim for compensation to the council and that compensation will be paid. All of the money the council pays out will come back on the taxpayer, and that does go against the grain because it is a case of negligence on the part of the council."

County councillor Derek Prodger, cabinet member for the environment, apologised to Mr Birch that his calls had not been logged and said he would look into why that had happened.

Coun Prodger said Tetbury Drive was scheduled for resurfacing in the near future and engineers would visit the site to inspect the problems.

Mr Birch said the problem with the gulley stones had only started in the last two years.

"We didn't have this problem before the speed humps were put in and smaller buses came down here," he said.

"We get big 52-seater buses down here now and they are going over those humps and down a hard camber and all the pressure travels down one wheel, breaking up the sub-structure of the road.

"This road was never intended for these large buses. For years we had smaller buses and there was nothing, but now that we have big buses suddenly there's a problem.

"The longer this goes on, the worse it's going to get."