Bromley’s ‘pothole problem’ highlighted with Crocs and funny toys

Tim Webb, who lives in the area, started the campaign after seeing another man doing a similar thing on Facebook in Brightlingsea, Essex.

He has staged toys in all sorts of ways in and around the potholes – including baby Crocs, a family of ducks, a stairway to heaven, an exotic fish pond, a recovery truck rescue and even a crash-landed UFO.

Tim told the News Shopper: “Sometimes you have to step outside of the normal comfort zone in the way of doing things, and I think I just got a little voice inside telling me this seems to be a way forward.

“I never meant to start a campaign at first.

“It wasn’t until there a pothole appeared in a road in Orpington High Street in January which was quite substantial that I started paying particular attention to the issue.

“The contractors put a cone in it because it’s a busy road for traffic.

“I complained to some of the local councillors and another cone was put in there a few days later and we ended up with three cones in this pothole and I said well, rather than put three cones why don’t they just come and repair it?”

“Eventually they came and repaired it, but they did a temporary fix, and then a few weeks later - you can guess what happens; the pothole opens up and they have to come and repair it again.

“This got me thinking that there is a wider problem across the borough.”

He began logging potholes on the Bromley Council reporting app as well as having a look at previous reports and how long they had remained unrepaired.

Tim explained that once he started putting the toys and props into the potholes and rereporting them to FixMyStreet - action began to be taken to repair the potholes after their newfound attention.

He said: “I suppose I do this to draw attention to the fact that there is a significant problem across Bromley with potholes, and I just felt that a bit of humour might draw the attention of the Council officers and Councillors.

“When I look through the reports, I notice that around one in three reports now are now duplicates because people have reported it, nothing's happened and then they’re reporting it again and again - People are getting increasingly frustrated because nothing is happening.”

Tim explained that he does not feel badly towards the council but says that there “must be something fundamentally wrong with the system” for this to be such a problem.

He added: “I am not out there to publicly humiliate anyone in the Council or contractors - This is just to highlight this problem and I think the issue at the heart of it is the question of why has the situation got worse?”

He highlights that the council may have a backlog of work after Covid and that the contractors may be “rushed off their feet” with the amount of work.

However, he criticises how temporary repairs are often used on the road rather than more long-term options causing them to break again soon after and how sometimes the worst pothole in a collection of smaller ones is fixed rather than just repairing the cluster as a whole.

Tim goes on to mention that some people on FixMyStreet have reported damage to their cars due to potholes and that he has seen traffic dangerously swerving to miss the holes – particularly on Crofton Lane.

He gets the toys and items for his pothole shenanigans from charity shops and car boot sales – often on the hunt for specific items in order to make his tiny art pieces a reality.

Tim added: “At the moment I'm after a yellow dump truck but I don't want to pay a fortune for one, I also desperately want to get hold of a Playmobil rock man Playmobil rock band because I want to do Led Zeppelin, Whole Lot of Love.”

Despite the popularity of his pothole displays, Tim urges the public to not do the same as him as it involves a certain amount of risk, and he does not want to encourage anyone to put themselves in danger.

He only puts the toys in quieter roads that he knows will not cause any harm to road users or put himself at risk when he is planting them and careful plans his actions.

He names the locations that currently have the most frequent reports on Fix My Street and claims that duplicate reports are constantly being registered as no action is being taken.

These roads include:

• Junction of Repton Road and Court Road.
• Crofton Lane near Sparrow Drive.
• Shire Lane.
• Junction of Tower Road and Sevenoaks Road.
• The junctions of Tower Road and Sevenoaks Road.
• Crofton Lane between Perry Hall Road and Crofton School.

A Council spokesperson said, “In common with councils across the country, the situation with potholes is serious, with the winter weather causing unprecedented damage to the country’s roads, including in our Borough.  The extreme low temperatures, even prior to Christmas and the torrential rain have caused significant damage, with potholes resulting. 

"These conditions were less than ideal to carry out pothole repair works, with some of the temporary repair work failing, adding to the issue. 

"We are London’s biggest borough with 537 miles of road equal to the distance to Zurich and we now have 13 teams completing some 350 potholes a week and these teams will be kept on across the summer. 

"Whilst we are firmly focussed on fixing the outstanding potholes, there is regrettably no quick fix locally, with work to resolve the outstanding issues continuing into the summer, where the conditions will also support permanent successful fixes. 

"We recognise this is a cause of frustration to many and are grateful to motorists for their understanding and their reports of potholes that need fixing, which can be reported via our website. 

"Where a pothole has already been reported, then there is no need to report this again but instead you can monitor progress to the existing repair. 

"It should be noted that although maintenance of the principal road network is a TfL responsibility to fund, for which we have only received £280k since 2018-19, Bromley is spending its money to deal with the potholes on these roads.”