Residents in a leafy street with £800,000 homes are furious at massive puddles which form in potholes on their road – leading to fears a ‘child will soon die’.
They have compared the condition of the road to that of a ‘warzone’, with holes they say resembles a series of ponds.
The issue has lasted for several years and shows no sign of improving.
Residents believe it is made worse by parents dropping off their children at a school on the road which causes even larger pools of water on the unpaved road which shifts and sinks with the weight of car tyres.
The situation is so bad that thousands of pounds of damage has been caused to cars and even ambulance and delivery drivers are unable to get through.
Locals are battling the local council over who has responsibility for Westgate Road.
It is unadopted, meaning Bromley Council has no obligation to maintain it, despite being the highways authority.
Lewisham Council owns a portion of it, further complicating the situation.
It has left locals ‘absolutely furious’.
Care worker June Kirby, 80, said: ‘It’s no man’s land. Nobody takes any responsibility for it. It’s shocking.
‘Nobody enforces it. It’s a disgrace. The school should be doing more. It’s their traffic which causes it.
‘For the last three years it’s been really bad. It’s caused bad damage to my car.
‘It’s just a stand-off. It’s limbo.
‘The parents at the school just turn up in their Chelsea tractors and ruin the road and make it much worse. It’s a total mess.’
Ryan Drinkwater, 45, said his car had also been badly damaged.
The recruitment manager said: ‘The puddles are enormous. If a child got trapped in there they would soon die. It’s atrocious.
‘Ambulances do not come down here. A poor guy fell and they could not get to him in his own home because of the state of the road.
‘It’s like a war zone.’
He added that the council response and the school had been ‘terrible’.
He said: ‘It’s going to take something appalling and disastrous to happen before there’s action and at that point it’ll be too late.’
Retired civil servant Irene Tandy, 65, said it was a ‘dreadful’ situation.
She said: ‘A child could easily die in one of them. It’s awful.
‘It’s just been getting worse and worse. It will certainly impact the property prices in the area.’
Another local, who did not want to be named, said: ‘I cannot believe it.
‘It’s not what should be happening in Britain in 2024.’
Melanie Packwood, 74, has lived in a cul-de-sac off Westgate Road in Beckenham for 21 years.
She added: ‘I actually find that when I invite people over I say to them, ‘Please, park on one of the roads and walk the rest of the way in your oldest clothes and welly boots’, because you don’t want the problem of washing mud off.’
Ms Packwood said residents have historically contributed financially to maintaining and repairing the road, but many stopped after the council and school paused their payments.
She added that traffic outside the school increased significantly in the 1990s when it expanded, with parents driving down the road exacerbating the issue.
Robin Hoyles, Chair of Governors for St Mary’s Catholic Primary School Beckenham, said: ‘The school has actively engaged with residents, councillors and members of the council’s highways department for many years and continues to do so.
‘The school is a publicly funded body with statutory duties to use the money it receives for the education of children. The school made a financial contribution when the road was last repaired in 2018 and has offered a similar contribution on several occasions recently.’
Bromley Council was approached for comment.
