Northamptonshire's roads campaigner Mr Pothole retires
The decision comes on National Pothole Day
Mark Morrell, alias Mr Pothole, has announced his decision to take a step back on the tenth anniversary of the day which has become marked as National Pothole Day, January 15th.
Over the last twelve years, Mr Pothole has campaigned on the disruption caused by them both locally in Northamptonshire, and nationally.
He's challenged local authorities and political voices on attention and funding given to the problem.
Mark says he's quitting the part he plays in the public eye due to his wife's deteriorating health, but says he initially only wanted to take on the cause for six months:
"This is a very difficult decision which I have had to take with the standard of our roads seemingly going backwards. I can't see any improvement coming any time soon.
"I don't have any faith in government and I do not believe any political party want to tackle the backlog in road maintenance which needs to happen in this country now.
"They're not looking at the bigger picture of the issue costing the economy £14.4bn through badly maintained roads.
"Since I started championing the fight against potholes and road issues, which I did only intend to take on for a short time, I have had over £5 million of repairs carried out locally.
"I have managed to get over 10,000 potholes repaired now, and I have managed to help hundreds of people with claims for wide ranging issues which have resulted.
"My evidence is in a Transport Select Committee Inquiry that's got a lot of answers to what the government needs to do.
"This just needs to be implemented rather than left on a shelf gathering dust.
"In the future I see roads getting worse, poor standards, lack of investment, bad technology used will remain an issue. It's reported there's a million potholes on our roads but that's only the 'actionable' ones.
"The other defects which become potholes amount to 11.5 million using Ai.
"Once they've got the data, if they're still not going to fund it, it's a complete waste of time."