Innovative tactics are helping Wiltshire Council tackle potholes and cut down on complaints from motorists, its highways boss says.

Coun Dick Tonge, the cabinet member responsible for highways, said: “We get approximately 2,000 calls per year from the public, reporting potholes, and we repair around 7,500.

“We follow the rule of find-and-fix with our potholes. This minimises the amount of calls the public have to make to us.”

Wiltshire Council spent £1m last year on fixing individual potholes. It aims to have them fixed on the day they are reported. The council has also received £3m in grants from the government towards repairing winter road damage.

“We did have some extra money from government to repair extra holes last year. Obviously, the winter this year was nowhere near as bad,” said Coun Tonge.

In addition, the council has 20 teams of parish stewards, who will repair potholes as they see them. Coun Tonge said: “We have these teams in their yellow Land Rovers, who, if they see a problem, will stop and fix it quickly, and so we don’t get as many complaints from the public.

“They’ve been around for about five years, but recently we’ve changed it where, instead of sending them out to do a specific job, we’re saying, use your initiative. If they see something, they can fix it there and then.”

Coun Tonge added that Wiltshire Council trials of a new substance to fill potholes had proved successful.

The council is now looking at testing a mobile phone pothole tracking system. If the technology is adopted, it would mean members of the public could take photographs of potholes and send them to the council’s highways team. The team who would use GPS tracking to determine the exact location of the pothole.

Coun Tonge said the auth-ority’s long-term strategy would be to use its money to repair stret-ches of problem roads, which would provide a more lasting solution than just filling in holes. He said: “Last year, we resurfaced 32 per cent more road miles and that will certainly continue.

“We had a manifesto commitment to increase the maintenance and repair budget year-on-year and that’s what we’ve done.

“Despite the fact we’re under the hammer, what we’ve said is that highways are really important to us.”