Dear Editor,
I was interested to read your article in this week’s Bridgwater Mercury, ‘All the roads in the county that will be surface-dressed this summer’ (April 21, 2026), listing roads and lanes to be attended to.
On the surface this appears to be good news.
But to drivers on the A39 through Ashcott who experience daily potholes, collapsed gullies, subsidence (and residents who are woken at night from LGVs rattling over the same), the idea of surface dressing is nothing more than political surface dressing.
We note that roads listed to be surface dressed include Aller Drove, which I suspect has fewer than 100 vehicle movements per day, while Ashcott experiences 30,000 movements per day (many being LGVs)!
To have a county-wide plan without making a distinction between levels of need is to waste precious public funds.
In Ashcott we have a serious problem of neglect that is endangering lives.
What is needed is not ‘surface-dressing’, figurative or actual.
What is needed through Ashcott from village sign to village sign is work executed with a road planer that grinds out old tarmac and a Barber Greene to lay new asphalt, such as is being carried out near Clark’s Village in Street.
Anything less is a waste of public money as ‘surface dressing’ is a superficial activity that will not last.
Kind regards,
Anthony Lipmann
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