AN ANGRY resident of a village cul-de-sac says that money has been wasted resurfacing the road outside his home, when others in the county are in far worse condition.

Terry James said he could not believe it when he saw contractors starting to resurface Greenfields Close, Drakes Broughton, near Pershore.

Yesterday your Worcester News reported how the bill to repair the county’s defective pavements and footways has now hit £47 million.

Worcestershire County Council, which is responsible for highways and byways, currently spends £2 millon a year on footway maintenence but that figure will have to almost treble just to prevent the situation getting any worse.

The council says funding for Greenfields Close was ringfenced and the road would have been assessed and deemed to be needing repair.

Mr James said the cul-de-sac’s asphalt surface did not have any potholes in it when work started on Thursday and he thought it did not need replacing.

“It’s absolutely weird,” he said. “When we saw their kit being rolled out and a load of machines we thought they were here to do the pavement but blow me down they’re doing the road.

“They are doing several closes in the village but the main roads are absolutely rubbish and they’re not doing them. It just defies logic.”

Mr James said there are a lot of pavements in Drakes Broughton that need resurfacing. “They are totally unreasonable with trips and hazards and in this particular close some bits are breaking up and crumbling away. It’s absolutely crazy. I’m just incensed.”

A Worcestershire County Council spokesman said the resurfacing work fell under the urban estate roads project which hit the headlines in October last year. Back then the council borrowed £15 million off the Government so that it could carry out much-needed repairs to 217 miles of residential roads.

The spokesman said although people in Greenfields Close might have thought the road was in a reasonable condition engineers would have assessed it and deemed it at risk of turning into a bad state very quickly especially in the winter.

The spokesman said the borrowed money cannot be used on main roads or pathways – they are funded from the council’s budget – but any roads or pathways brought to the council’s attention would be looked at.