Tour of Britain insists "no issues" with potholes on stage route after councillor slams "dangerous" roads

The Tour of Britain has reassured the public and riders that there are "no issues" with stage seven's route through Gloucestershire after a local councillor this weekend slammed the "dreadful" and "dangerous" potholes on surrounding roads, saying it is "ironic" that the race is visiting when other roads would risk injuring those travelling by bicycle.

Liberal Democrat councillor Paul Hodgkinson called nearby roads "appalling" and an "embarrassment", just miles from where the stage of Saturday 9th September will be decided between Tewkesbury and Gloucester, marking the first time the county has hosted an entire stage of the race, just over a year after the Women's Tour also visited for the first time.

Responding to Cllr Hodgkinson's remarks, a spokesperson for the race told road.cc there are "no issues" with potholes on the route of stage seven.

We have no issues to report with the stage seven route, which will be driven by our Route Director for the final time as scheduled later this week ahead of the 9 September.

With this stage originally scheduled to run in September 2022 it is probably fair to say this route may have been driven and inspected by ourselves and partners in Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire more times than any other. We are very much looking forward to race day and what will be an exciting days racing.

The statement comes after Cllr Hodgkinson had taken to the local press to voice his disgust at the state of some roads nearby the route expected to be tackled by a stellar field, including an appearance from Wout van Aert, next month. 

"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 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."

A Chedworth resident last week convinced his 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 Pierce said. "In Chedworth we have some appalling road conditions which have been allowed to get worse.

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

"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."

When the race visited in 2014, 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. There is no suggestion any action will be required this time.

The Tour of Britain pothole discussion follows months of reporting, speculation and comment ahead of the World Championships' arrival in Scotland at the start of this month.

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".