We have sent the following email to Kennett Road residents.

Dear all

Thanks to all residents for alerting us to this pothole.

I asked the Highways Technician to sort this out, he sent down a team to give it a temporary fix but this failed. I contacted him again and he arranged to inspect the site- his concern was that if the temp fix had failed, then this was likely to be a sink hole and not a pothole. That would require the Highways Authority to call in Thames Water to assess it.

The inspection was done and Thames Water were called in. What happens in this scenario is that if any accidents happen meantime due to a sink hole, then claims need to be made to Thames Water.

Yesterday night I received a number of messages from various residents saying the sink hole was getting bigger so I called in the out of hours service to make it safe, but this is still a temporary fix.

Here is the advice sent to us this morning by the network supervisor at the Council:

We had a crew attended site last night and made safe again, I have contacted TW once again, and they have said they have carried out a CCTV survey and have denied that it’s their responsibility.

We will monitor this in the short term and will arrange for a team to attend site and carry out some investigation work,  but I’m not convinced they have done a complete survey and have asked for the survey report, as I don’t want to spend tax payers money and resources on a TW assets. If we find out it is there issue I will look at recovering the cost

The annoying thing when ownership of a problem is disputed is that the situation can take longer to get resolved. Altaf and I will keep pushing on this to try to get as fast a solution as possible, but in the meantime we would be grateful if you could contact us if you think the hole is once again becoming unsafe. Putting it bluntly, if the first temporary fix didn’t work, this one won’t either, so we need to watch this closely.

Just wanted to keep you updated

Regards, Ruth and Altaf