Hello and welcome to The Lancashire Lead.
There are few things that gets a local journalist going like an object in a pothole to demonstrate its scale.
I’ve seen rubber ducks, toy furniture and a mini submarine in my time. AI might have taken the fun out of this practice, but we do have classic of the genre for you today.
Of course, there is a serious point to it all. Potholes cause accidents. Failure to repair potholes can mean Lancashire County Council is responsible for those accidents.
The councillor at the centre of today’s story did not have an accident - but he does say it is proof that Reform UK is not grasping the nettle of Lancashire’s roads in the way that it says it is.
Lancashire briefing
💷 A row has broken out after a Lancashire county councillor suggested introducing a toll on a stretch of the M65 to help pay for repairs and maintenance.
Joel Tetlow floated the idea as a possible way of raising the £15m needed for drainage work on the route.
The Reform UK backbencher made the “hypothetical” proposal for the six-mile section between junction 10 – the Burnley and Clitheroe turn-off – and the end of the motorway at junction 14 in Colne. No official proposal is under consideration by Lancashire County Council, which Reform runs.
Nevertheless, any prospect of drivers having to dip into their pockets to access part of Lancashire’s road network was condemned by main opposition group leader Azhar Ali as a “double tax” on residents and businesses, which he branded “bonkers”.
Meanwhile, veteran Pendle Lib Dem councillor David Whipp – while supportive of having a “discussion” over the issue – warned that it could cause “chaos” on surrounding roads in East Lancashire.
A quirk of history means Lancashire County Council is responsible for the area between junctions 10 and 14, even though the rest of the route – and almost all of the motorway network in England – is looked after by government agency National Highways.
While the idea is a touch leftfield, it’s worth noting the issue in general is unique in Lancashire and incredibly rare in England.
🌹 Hyndburn residents are being urged to come out and line the streets to pay their respects to one of the borough’s long-serving councillors, Dave Parkins, after he passed away over the weekend.
Dubbed ‘Mr Huncoat’ for his decades of service to people in his ward, news of Cllr Parkins’ death on Sunday was met with widespread sadness from his colleagues and constituents, who praised his dedication to public life.
Before being elected to Hyndburn Borough Council in the 1990s, the 76-year-old had spent years serving first in the Royal Navy and then in the Army as a paratrooper, including service in Northern Ireland.
Arrangements are now being made for his funeral, which is being held on Wednesday, September 23, with a very special role for members of the public who wish to pay their respects to a man who spent most of his life serving the public.
Councillor bursts tyre on road Lancashire County Council failed to repair for months
By Luke Beardsworth
A councillor in Lancashire says that his own incident with a pothole is evidence to support his belief that there is a gap between performance and rhetoric when it comes to the state of the county’s roads.
Cllr Aidy Riggott, who represents Euxton, Buckshaw & Astley at Lancashire County Council for the Conservatives, was driving along Storrs Lane in Silverdale in the evening on Friday, 29 May when he went over a pothole.
His tyre burst immediately.
The road is a national speed limit route and extremely rural - something that meant Riggott had to wait four hours for recovery.
As a councillor, he has access to the Lancashire County Council dashboard that allows him to see when defects were reported and when work has been done.
He saw that a job had been raised to repair the pothole on Storrs Lane on 6 February with a target completion date of 23 March. Over two months later, with no repair carried out, it resulted in a burst tyre.
The job being raised in February 2026 means that it falls into the period of Quarter 3 or Quarter 4 of the 25/26 financial year - where pothole repair performance data at the Reform-led authority has not been made public.
The Lancashire Lead understands that the data does exist but is not published because it would not give a ‘fair and accurate’ picture.