Commonside East in Mitcham has been branded London’s ‘worst street’ (Image: SWNS)
Angry residents have spoken of the misery of living in what they believe is “London’s worst street” – with potholes so bad not emergency vehicles actually refuse to drive along it.
Renters and homeowners in Commonside East in Mitcham, south-east London, say the road is in such dire state they are regularly forced to dish out thousands of pounds to repair their vehicles.
However, they are stuck in limbo because the road is privately owned and the are say they are under no obligation to fix it.
The local authority says they will adopt it and maintain it once it is mended – but to do so residents will be forced to cough up an eye-watering £500,000.
The shoddy upkeep of the road has also even made it a target for fly-tipping and residents have to take all their rubbish to and from the street entrance on bin days because refuse trucks will not drive down there either.
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The road will cost an estimated £500,000 to repair (Image: SWNS)
Located opposite Mitcham Common, Commonside East is the property of cash-strapped Mitcham Common Conservators (MCC) which regards the street as a ‘track’ rather than a road.
Residents also claim the road detrimentally affects the price of their houses, which have sold in years gone by for more than £500,000.
Homeowner Tania Marszalek, 42, said the dangerously deep potholes cause constant misery in her daily life.
She said: “Ambulances and refuse people can’t get down here. The council have said they’d be happy to adopt the road if we made it roadworthy.
“That would cost about half a million pounds. Most people are renting, and we don’t have that sort of money.
Residents claim not even emergency vehicles will drive along the street (Image: SWNS)
“It’s grim. It’s really depressing when you look out of your window and see puddles every day. Some delivery people say, ‘I’m from Africa and our roads are much better than this’.
“It’s like tank tracks. I just want to get a digger and scrape the road flat – but the cost quoted for that was £35,000.”
Ms Marszalek, a medical communications director who bought her home seven years ago, said many residents had bought 4×4 cars to navigate the potholes, which were making things even worse.
She continued: “My neighbour found it hard to get a mortgage because of the state of the road. It’s not really fair. Over the years we’ve had numerous legal advice and there’s nothing we can do.
“And because it looks so bad people have started fly-tipping. People see it as a sort of dumping ground, We shouldn’t be living like this. This is Zone 3. I’ve never seen a worse street. “This could be London’s worst street. It’s just gross.”
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Hannah, another homeowner and neighbour of Ms Marszalek, says the nightmarish road affected almost every aspect of her and her children’s lives.
The single mother-of-two said: “It’s dreadful. You have to wear wellies just to go to the car and back. When I was pregnant, I could feel my daughter’s head flopping around – even though I was driving at one mile an hour.
“But the most frustrating thing is the inaction. It feels like we’re stuck in a bureaucratic loop where nothing gets done. “The idea that between us – a row of around 20 houses in Mitcham – could put up the amount to make it ‘roadworthy’ is just insulting.
“Everything we do is impacted by it. It caused problems with my mortgage and it affects house prices. The bin lorry won’t even come down here… It’s just disgusting.”
Another resident, who asked to be know only as Troy, said he was even fined recently for leaving rubbish out for too long.
The father-of-two, who has rented a home on the street with his young family for around three years, says he has so far gone through two cars in that time and spent around £2,000 on repairs.
He explained: “We’ve had to switch cars three times because the potholes ruin the undersides. In terms of repair costs on my car, I have spent about two grand. You hear the scrape every time.
The London Borough of Mitcham will not adopt the road until they are satisfied it has been brought up to scratch (Image: SWNS)
“Of course we want them to do something about it. But the MCC say it’s not on them to provide a roadworthy, driveable road and the council say it’s not their problem.”
Jan Greenslade, who along with her partner has been campaigning for decades to improve the condition of the road. The 53-year-old claimed MCC told residents around 15 years ago that if residents gave permission to construct a “ditch and bund” on the road, they would agree to improve it.
However, after residents gave them permission for the work – which halved the size of the road – no promised improvements were made.
Ms Greenslade said: “I’ve been to Africa and there are better roads there,” Ms Greenslade fumed. “Somebody had a leg injury once and the ambulance refused to come down here. If I had a neck or spinal injury, I wouldn’t want to come down this road either.
“We’re constantly having to get our alignment done and our tyres replaced. I don’t have any hope left for getting anything sorted now. I used to call this area the last bastion of niceness… Mitcham has a great history. But it’s all going to rack and ruin. It’s a shame.”
Another resident said she struggles to get taxis to pick her up on the road and warns guests to ‘spare’ their cars and park on other roads when they come to visit.
The state of the roads is laid bare in this picture (Image: SWNS)
She admitted: “We are worried about house prices. We bought our home because we love the house and it opens out to the common.
“It’s an in between, between London living and country living, but we do have concerns about reselling.”
Yoga teacher Chris Smurthwaite is one of the few residents unconcerned by the state of the road, and instead fears its repair could see it become a rush-hour rat-run.
The 49-year-old, who has lived in the area for around a decade, drills the patch of road outside his home once a year to level it out and does not want it repaired.
He said: “For the people who have lived here a long time, they know it would be a nightmare. It would be a cut through. It used to be a cut through and people used to come down during rush hour.
“If they got it fixed then it wouldn’t be such a quiet street. I prefer it like this because it stops people using it.”
Siobhain McDonagh, the Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden, described the problem as a ‘dilemma’ she’d tried to tackle in the past, and suggested the City of London Corporation
could be a potential organisation to fit the bill for the costly repairs.
She said: “It’s a challenge. It’s a really big issue. It’s hard to think it would cost so much but the work’s so expensive. I have in the past tried to contact the City of London. I didn’t manage to make a lot of progress with that, but if the residents would like me to, I’m more than happy to try again.”
MCC has been contacted for comment but has so far not responded.
