Councillor slams “dreadful, dangerous” potholes, as decision to host Tour of Britain stage on nearby roads branded “ironic”

After the build-up to this year’s UCI Cycling World Championships in Scotland was peppered with complaints from local cyclists and motorists about the state of the roads earmarked for the event, as well as the so-called “selective repairs” carried out on Glasgow’s many potholes, it’s now the turn of the Tour of Britain to provide the focal point for concerns regarding the atrocious condition of the UK’s roads.

With the Tour of Britain set to return to Gloucestershire this year, after last year’s stage in the county was cancelled following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, local Cotswolds councillors and residents have lashed out at the decision to host an international bike race when so many of the roads used by everyday cyclists in the area are in such a “dreadful” state.

Stage seven of this year’s Tour of Britain, a 171km looping route taking the riders from the medieval market town of Tewkesbury to Gloucester, will mark the first time that Gloucestershire has hosted an entire stage of the race, just over a year after the Women’s Tour also visited for the first time.

The stage, which will take place on Saturday 9 September, will cover the rolling hills of the Cotswolds before a couple of nasty, steep climbs in the final 30 kilometres could potentially decide the day’s winner and serve up some exhilarating racing.

Cees Bol beats Jake Stewart on stage two of last year’s Tour of Britain (Will Palmer/SWpix.com)

However, Gloucestershire Live reports that despite the opportunity to witness some world-class sporting spectacle on Gloucestershire’s roads, with former Tour of Britain winner Wout van Aert pencilled in for another crack at Britain’s biggest stage race, local Liberal Democrat councillor Paul Hodgkinson pointed out this week that the dangerous state of the pothole-laden roads near where the stage is taking place continue to be neglected by the local authority.

“With the Tour of Britain coming through the Cotswolds soon, it’s ironic that some other roads not being used by the bikes are in a dreadful state,” the county councillor said.

“Cyclists would be seriously at risk if they used them. Roads like the Whiteway between North Cerney and Chedworth are appalling and have been so for ages.

“Despite a commitment to sort some of these roads out, these highways are an embarrassment to us all when tourists experiencing the beauty of the Cotswolds must wonder what on earth has gone wrong locally.”

> Is there a pothole crisis on Britain's roads?

Hodgkinson’s comments were echoed by a resident from Chedworth, located within touching distance of stage seven’s route, who earlier this week persuaded the parish council to write to Conservative county council leader Mark Hawthorne to call for the roads to be urgently repaired.

“We pay over £30 billion in car tax and fuel duty and nothing like that is ringfenced for the maintenance of the roads,” Colin Peirce told the parish council. “In Chedworth we have some appalling road conditions which have been allowed to get worse.

“The parish council has to stand up for us and insist that these roads are resurfaced, that they need total repair. We’ve got cyclists and pedestrians injuring themselves and damage to cars.

“I call it road rage. It’s a form of road rage and unless people realise how bad the situation is it’s only going to get worse. We are supposed to be an area of outstanding natural beauty and tourists who come here must think it’s a third-world country.”

Tour of Britain organisers SweetSpot have been contacted by road.cc for comment.

> Anger as "dangerous" potholes repaired on World Championships route while other roads nearby remain "abysmal"

This isn’t the first time that Gloucestershire’s roads have come under scrutiny due to the arrival of the Tour of Britain.

Back in 2014, as Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish prepared to take on the week-long stage race on home roads, Gloucestershire Highways launched a last-minute plan to repair 35 roads along the route of stage four, despite the surfaces gaining prior approval by race organisers and being deemed to be maintained to the national safety standard.

And, of course, nine years later the seemingly deteriorating condition of the UK’s roads was a common theme in the run-up to this month’s inaugural UCI Cycling World Championships in Glasgow.

In February we reported that a local cyclist had raised the alarm over a series of “dangerous” potholes along the road race routes, while in June the “crude” last-minute “patch-up” of the potholes on the route attracted even more criticism, after a representative from Tadej Pogačar’s Slovenian team reportedly branded the Scottish roads as the “worst they’d ever seen”.

And at the end of July, just days before the championships commenced, politicians, pothole campaigners, a taxi federation chairman, as well as numerous locals in Glasgow hit out at the city council over the last-minute repair work that was carried out on roads that formed part of the road race circuit – which they say were made purely to accommodate the racing while others nearby in the city remain “appalling” and “dangerous”.