Church Street Boston Spa: 'Great big sinkholes' open on Leeds street - just weeks after being resurfaced

Faults were reported on Church Street, in Boston Spa, several weeks ago - but the situation worsened last weekend, according to Coun Alan Lamb.

The Wetherby councillor explained that the authority decided to close the road for an "investigatory dig", which came just weeks after resurfacing works had finished.

Conservative Coun Lamb, who is the leader of the opposition at Leeds City Council, said: "They just resurfaced the road and great big sinkholes started opening. Your front tyre would have got stuck in one.

"The current theory is that it's on soft clay that just decided to start sinking. Once it's stabilised, the council is planning to resurface it again."

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He added: "To be fair, council workers got out there pretty swiftly. But it would have been much better if the council did the work correctly in the first place.

"There is such a huge backlog that we are 14 years behind schedule, and the council is having to spend all its time on reactive maintenance, rather than being proactive."

It is understood that Church Street reopened to traffic this morning (February 29), as workers found no "major defects" in the road. Coun Lamb said the area would continue to be monitored.

A spokesperson for Leeds City Council said: "Following maintenance and recent resurfacing work carried out on Church Street, some voids in the road surface began to appear. Nothing prior to the old road surface being removed suggested these defects would appear.

"Subsequent inspection of the area revealed patterns that suggest an old service trench may have been insufficiently compacted previously, which when disturbed by resurfacing equipment and machinery caused the imperfections to expose themselves.

"Holes in the road surface have been made temporarily safe pending more substantive works to rectify the issue in near future.”