 Working as hard and as fast as they can, the road crews of West Sussex battle to repair the damage either done or made worse by the bad weather. Only a few days after Christmas, 600 new potholes had been reported to the County Council. Now they're pulling out all the stops to fix them. As well as pumping away severe flooding, the Council's also pumping in eight and a quarter million pounds to tackle the problems. Operation Watershed is prioritising the worst hit areas and it's also paying to triple the number of pothole patrols. Well, as you know, we spend many millions on capital projects every year, big building schemes, you know, building schools. We're just pulling on some reserves in response to our residents, in our response to looking after our residents, keeping traffic moving on the road. So all we're doing is responding to that very big need. They're mending the potholes more quickly, but the holes are also appearing at a faster rate, which is why you might not always notice the difference. Why does all the heavy rain mean more potholes? And what happens if your car or bike gets damaged? Well, drivers shouldn't automatically assume that the County Council will be liable. We obviously operate a maintenance regime and as long as we've implemented that correctly, then we're not liable. The seasonal effect that we're seeing at the moment of the combination of a lot of ground water and surface water and the cold temperatures is exacerbating some of those cracks and making them worse. And obviously as the cracks get bigger, more and more water is getting in and hence the potholes are forming quicker than ever. Well, certainly those that represent a significant safety hazard will get those sorted out within two hours. The potholes of more than 100 mil will do those within five days, between 40 and 100 mil, 28 days. But potholes less than 40 mil we won't do immediately, but we will continue to monitor them. Although the pothole patrols have trebled, they can't be everywhere. The best thing is to recruit many more pairs of eyes to spot the trouble spots. One way of doing that is to use the Love West Sussex website or a new smartphone app of the same name. And one piece of information is particularly important. We need to know that a rough dimension of the depth of the pothole and by means of examples, is it as deep as a coke can? Is it as deep as a golf ball? And then sort of the dimensions of the pothole. So is it one metre long by half a metre wide or is it 30 centimetres by 30 centimetres? These really are a few bits of information we need. And here's the smartphone app that Adam mentioned. So there are three simple steps to filling this out. Firstly, if you hit the begin button, you're then prompted by a map in which if you can locate the pin in the location you believe the defect to be in. Followed by a photo of the defect with an overview shot of the area. And finally a text box in which you can enter the description, choosing the category in which you believe the defect to be, in this example, a pothole, followed by sending the report. In an emergency, you can also report a pothole by calling 01243 642 105. And don't worry if anybody's reported it before, they'd sooner be told about the same pothole more than once than miss a vital one. How long will the repairs last? Well, each one's carefully assessed and a temporary repair is made if the road is soon to be resurfaced and a longer lasting one if it isn't. As for resurfacing, there are strict criteria and when these are met, the road is added to the list. Although summer's the best, resurfacing in fact takes place all year round. There's no doubt that potholes and flooding are destined to stay on the county council's priority list for a long time to come. But with everyone working together, we can keep West Sussex moving.