A road in England has become riddled with potholes and is in an extremely poor condition. Because the maintenance company has gone bankrupt, local residents have furiously renamed the street "Pothole Town," but the local council still claims it is outside their jurisdiction and cannot intervene.
According to the Daily Mail, 'Old Bridge Road' in Shefford, Bedfordshire, England has become riddled with craters, with residents strongly criticizing this "impassable" road for falling into a state of permanent disrepair due to no one being responsible for its maintenance.
The company previously in charge of repairs went bankrupt in 2024, leaving the potholed road in a "no man's land."
As public discontent boiled over, someone even put up a sign reading "Welcome to Pothole Town" over the original street name.
This road is the only access to the local Morrisons supermarket, yet Central Bedfordshire Council still refuses to intervene or repair it.
Labour MP Alistair Strathern has started a petition, urging the council to "step up and do the right thing." He sternly pointed out: "Old Bridge Road is becoming more and more like an off-road obstacle course. The council could have invoked powers under the Highways Act to push for repairs, and also allocated extra funding to fix it directly. Their inaction is purely a political decision."
However, Council’s Executive Member for Highways John Baker rebuffed on Facebook, accusing Strathern of "having a duty to plug loopholes that let developers shirk responsibility, rather than defending them."
Baker revealed that the developer previously responsible for this private road, in May 2023, sold the road for £1 to another shell company—controlled by the same directors but "penniless"—and then let it be liquidated, pushing responsibility for the road onto the government and leaving it derelict.
Baker emphasized: "For taxpayers to spend over a million pounds for the government to take over a single private company’s road is unreasonable, given that other responsible companies pay for their own road repairs. We understand public concern about the condition of Old Bridge Road, but this section is not a public highway and is not within our jurisdiction."