Historic racing automobile firm boss slams ‘bodged’ highway repairs in county

A racing car manufacturer tycoon has slammed the shoddy road repairs in his county which has an ‘unprecedented’ number of craters, telling the council ‘you must be on drugs’.

Lawrence Whittaker, the CEO of Britain’s oldest racing car producer Lister Cars, furiously told Lancashire County Council he has ‘finally reached the end of my very long tether’.

Sharing photos of ‘repaired’ potholes, he said: ‘If you think by tarmacking these white circles on the B6246 from Mitton to Whalley you will have repaired the road, you must be on drugs! 

‘I pay over 100 car taxes and I demand it be done properly.’

In March, a councillor told a local authority meeting they looked ‘stupid’ to residents because of the ‘unprecedented’ number of potholes – with 11,000 repair jobs filed as a ‘work in progress’.

It comes after a coroner blasted the council last year, ruling that a retired teacher would still be alive if it had repaired the decade-old pothole which threw Harry Colledge, 84, from his bike.

Replying to a comment on his post, Mr Whittaker added: ‘It must have only been a month ago they bodged the repairs and now it needs doing again?! Lunacy.’

He also responded to a comment calling the road ‘appalling’ by saying: ‘Got to be one of the worst in Britain!’

‘I know I sound like a bitter old man but it’s been driving me mad all winter. It’s especially bad for cyclists or more importantly classic car drivers,’ he continued. 

The Lister Motor Company is a British sports car manufacturer founded by racing car driver Brian Lister in 1954 in Cambridge, which has become known for its involvement in motorsports.

Father and son Andrew and Lawrence Whittaker bought the company in 2013 and build ‘a range of historic racing cars and tuned Jaguar vehicles’.

According to the website, they take part in many local and national car club events and regularly support and sponsor national historic motor-sport, most notably the Stirling Moss Trophy series held by Motor Racing Legends.

A spokesman for Lancashire County Council told MailOnline: ‘Potholes are caused by wet and cold weather and councils across the UK are facing a backlog of repairs following a particularly damp winter.

‘In Lancashire we engaged extra contractors to add to the resources available to our highways teams through the winter, and now the weather has improved we’re carrying out a major programme of resurfacing, high-quality patching and other maintenance to bring our roads into better condition.

‘We carry out our regular inspections to try to identify and repair any issues promptly before they become a risk, however potholes can go from being a small defect to becoming much bigger very quickly in poor weather.

‘We’d ask people to help us by reporting potholes or any other safety issues using the Love Clean Streets app, via our website or by calling our customer service centre, so that we can carry out prompt inspections and repairs.’

Following the tragedy of Mr Colledge’s death, his widow Valerie movingly wrote to the Mail in support of our End the Pothole Plague campaign.

Her late husband suffered a fatal brain injury after his front wheel lodged in the crack, described as a 6in-deep ‘trench’. 

But in a claim the coroner said ‘defies all reasonable logic’, a highways chief explained that he did not spot the crack four months earlier because it ‘must have closed up on its own’.

Valerie warned that rural roads like the one where her husband died were ‘riddled’ with potholes, with too many councils ‘turning a blind eye’ despite the threat to motorists and cyclists.

An inquest heard the crack was visible in 2009 when the road was photographed for Google Street View.

Four months before the accident the local parish council arranged for pictures of it to be sent to highways bosses.

A team sent to inspect the lane days later failed to spot it. Later that month Lancashire safety inspector Robert Treen also examined the lane and suggested the reason he did not see the pothole was that it had ‘closed up on its own’.

But an independent highways maintenance expert told the hearing he was ‘not aware of any mechanism that would have caused that crack to be there on September 9, not be there on September 15 then return on January 2’.

Recording a narrative conclusion, coroner Kate Bisset found that had the hazard been repaired, Mr Colledge would not have died.

Last month, the Mail reported how Rebecca Salisbury, 23, dislocated her ankle by tripping over a pothole and was told by Lancashire County Council that the craters are a ‘fact of life’ when she asked for compensation.

She was left in the ‘worst pain’ ever when she took a tumble on a damaged section of tarmac next to a car park, in Preston, Lancs.

She was rushed to hospital in an ambulance and later put to sleep so doctors could ‘pull’ her bone back into place and fit a cast.

Ms Salisbury put in a compensation claim to Lancashire County Council to cover taxi trips for appointments, costs for hospital parking and other expenses.

But she was left appalled when their rejection letter quoted the past legal case, which also said ‘in a less than perfect world’, potholes should be expected.

It comes after the Transport Secretary named and shamed councils which have failed to submit detailed pans for fixing potholes.

Mark Harper revealed nearly one in six councils have not lodged plans for how they intend to spend extra Government cash for mending roads – meaning future funding could now be withheld.

Speaking to the Daily Mail previously, which has campaigned for an end to the pothole plague, Mr Harper warned roads would be ‘worse and more pothole-ridden’ under a Labour government because the party secretly plans to divert £8.3billion earmarked for highways into HS2.

The pot was set aside under £36billion in savings after the Government last year scrapped the high-speed rail project’s northern leg from Birmingham to Manchester.

But Mr Harper’s Labour counterpart, transport spokesman Louise Haigh, is said to have privately indicated to the rail industry through her team that her party plans to bring back HS2’s northern leg.

Mr Harper said: ‘If you resurrect the second phase of HS2 there is no money for this increase to road resurfacing.’

He added: ‘It means worse roads and more potholes under Labour.’

But a Labour spokesperson said: ‘This is inaccurate. Labour does not plan to resurrect the Government’s HS2 plans.

‘The Government has taken a wrecking ball to HS2 and has blown the budget.’

The first £300million tranche of the £8.3billion pot is being paid to councils for fixing roads over last year (2023/24) and this year (2024/25).

Some 102 of the 119 local transport authorities in England submitted their plans on time.

The highest volume of roads to be resurfaced are in the West Midlands (600,000 square metres) and East Midlands (350,000 square metres).

Most of the £8.3billion pot, to be paid over 11 years, will go to areas in the Midlands and North.

Mr Harper said the missed deadlines by Labour-run councils indicated a wider anti-driver attitude.

And research undertaken by the Centre for Economics and Business Research revealed that potholes on British roads are costing the economy £14billion, and may take 11 years to fix due to the low quality of the UK’s road network.

Damage and accidents caused by potholes, as well as congestion, all contributed to the eyewatering bill footed by Britons every year.

Emissions related to severe changes in speed to avoid potholes also contributes to the £14bn they cost the UK.