Residents on the Commonside East in Mitcham shared that the road is in such bad condition they’re regularly forced to fork out thousands to repair their cars.
However, they’re stuck in limbo as the road is privately owned and the owners say they are under no obligation to repair it.
Although the local council say they will adopt it and maintain it once it is fixed, leaving residents needing around £500,000 to repair it.
The shoddy upkeep of the road has also made it a target for fly-tipping, seeing residents forced to take all their rubbish to and from the street entrance on bin days as the trucks won’t drive down there.
“It’s grim. It’s really depressing”
The street is opposite Mitcham Common and is owned by cash-strapped Mitcham Common Conservators (MCC) who regard the street as a ‘track’ rather than a road.
Residents also fear the road detrimentally affects the price of their houses, which have sold in years gone by for more than £500,000.
One homeowner on the street, Tania Marszalek said the dangerously deep potholes cause constant misery in her day-to-day life: “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.
“It’s grim. It’s really depressing when you look out of your window and see puddles every day.”
Ms Marszalek, a medical communications director who bought her home in 2016, said that it was not fair for residents:
“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.”
“I’ve been to Africa and there are better roads there”
Jan Greenslade, who along with her partner has been campaigning for decades to improve the condition of the road.
The 53-year-old claims MCC told residents around 15 years ago that if residents are permitted 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.
“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.”
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.
“For the people who have lived here a long time, they know it would be a nightmare,” he said.
“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.
“It’s a challenge,” she said. “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.”
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