While I understand potholes are caused by variations in weather, the state of the roads in Wandsworth really is quite intolerable.

I pay £250 a year in road tax, more than £1,000 in council tax and a good few parking tickets, yet the quality of the road surfaces in many areas is, frankly, embarrassing. On Saturday my wife drove through an asteroid-sized crater near Putney Common causing a punctured tyre that will cost £200 to replace.

Whenever I speak to Wands-worth Council, I am told it is either due to freezing winter weather or sizzling summer temperatures. Yet other boroughs, such as Richmond or Merton, that I regularly drive through, do not seem to have this problem.

But having read in the Wandsworth Guardian the council made more than £25m from parking tickets, the state of the roads is baffling. What on earth is it spending the money on? Rather than returning the roads to an acceptable state, is their army of crack traffic wardens parading the streets in  silk uniforms?  The mind boggles.  

TERENCE FARQUHARSON

West Putney