For taxi driver Mark Hayman flooding and potholes are the banes of his life and he doesn’t believe Devon County Council are doing enough to fix the problems.

One of the roads Mark uses the most is the A379 and if you bear right on the Bantham roundabout coming from Churchstow the road floods around four times a day for up to 300 metres.

Mark explains the background: “As you carry on towards Aveton Gifford on the left-hand side there used to be a big gateway in the hedge and the owner of that land would drive through that gateway onto their land.

It appears Devon County Highways said it's too dangerous for traffic and so they blocked it off but that blocked the drains.

“As we know rain just naturally gravitates whichever way it's got to go comes off the fields go towards the drains and the drains are blocked so it floods the road.”

Devon County Council put up signs to say the road has flooded but this doesn’t fix the problem of the blockage.

Mark added: “For 99 per cent of people with car insurance policies if you read the small print if you go through flood water and your car gives up, you're not covered for insurance a lot of people don’t know that.”

Mark wrote to Devon County Council and received this reply:

“It has taken a few days to establish that neither our jetter nor a hired-in jetter could sort the problem and that the issue was a blockage on private land.

“We then tried to establish contact with the landowner, as it is ultimately for a landowner to maintain their ditches, but we didn't manage to. In this instance and needing to sort the problem, we mobilised a gang to carry out ditch clearance and

this has been successful.

“We also mobilised a patch repair gang to deal with the pothole, once the water had cleared.

“Further correspondence with the land owner will now be carried out to try to eliminate this happening again.”

Mark also recently reported a blocked drain on a hill short distance from Winking Prawn at North Sands in Salcombe.

Devon Highways replied: ‘Thank you for your getting in touch with us.

Reports of blocked drains are not automatically considered a defect, and do not, by themselves, generate any action.

Action will only be taken if, more than 24hrs after it's stopped raining, a flood leads directly to the road becoming impassable, or is forcing vehicles, cyclists or pedestrians away from the nearside of the carriageway by more than 1m, or if vehicles have to cross the centreline.’

Mark’s other issue as a taxi driver is with potholes.

Devon County Council has a facility on their website to report them and you have to persevere through the questions but if you make it to the end the pothole will be investigated.

We reported a series of potholes near Norton Brook Medical Centre in Kingsbridge and it took less than five minutes to do so.

Visit: https://tinyurl.com/bdex7usp