THE City of Edinburgh Council celebrated National Pothole Day with a proud road repair claim – but locals haven’t been impressed.
The authority shared a snap of their JCB Pothole Pro yesterday in celebration of the tongue-in-cheek day with the statement that they had repaired potholes in the city equating to an area of 22,000 square metres of land.
However, residents in the capital weren’t convinced, claiming that very few had noticed an impact on their streets, complaining about countless road repairs still required.
Indeed, Edinburgh City covers an area of roughly 263 square kilometres, or 263,000 square metres, meaning that the council’s 22,000 square metres of repairs equates to less than 10% of this total area.
It was reported in January last year that the council’s hire of the JCB “pothole killer” cost the council £5,416 per month.
This followed a report that in the time the council had access to the JCB – 94 days at the time – it had been out of use for 48 days.
The council had hired the Pothole Pro in 2023 to trial it after facing a £77m backlog of road repairs, with its manufacturers claimed the machine can carry out repairs in a quarter of the time at half the cost.
Posting to social media yesterday the City of Edinburgh Council wrote: “On National Pothole Day we can share that since beginning to use the Pothole Pro in March 2023 we’ve fixed over 22,000 square metres of road surfaces across Edinburgh.
“Find out more about how to report potholes and how we repair them on our website.”
Social media users quickly began the complaints though, with more than two dozen leaving comments.
One user wrote: “Even the speed bumps have potholes.”
Another replied: “Well not the roads I drive on. Dangerous pothole at roundabout at Balgreen Road when coming from Gorgie Road.
“Thought the car was about to break in two.”
A third said: “And [you’ve] still not paid for the damage to my car over a year ago. Application made and nothing. Do you have a complaints procedure?”
Another commented: “National Pothole Day – the fact you are even tweeting this shows how out of touch yous (sic) are with the public, what about all the potholes that have been missed?
“Leith is a mess, around the city has many potholes as I’m sure many other places also. So where is this 22,000?”
A fifth added: “Have you seen Craigs Road? Virtually unusable.”
