On a social housing estate in Hertfordshire, hemmed in by mansions, residents have been fighting for 70 years to get someone to repair a cratered stretch of road that causes falls and punctured tyres. Why is it taking so long?

The day after Rachel Reeves, in her first budget as chancellor, denounced potholes as a “visible reminder of our failure to invest as a nation”, Sarah Wright is staring at a £73,000 repair bill. The carer, 59, has become something of a celebrity thanks to her Hertfordshire cul-de-sac’s 70-year battle over potholes. “This is not my comfort zone – it makes me feel anxious,” she says of speaking to the press, “but I can do it because I’m doing it for these people. How can I say no?”

The people in question are her neighbours on Whitebarns Lane in the sleepy village of Furneux Pelham, where the average house is more than £1m and looks like something out of House & Garden. Unlike the mansions that hem it in, the 1950s cul-de-sac where Wright has lived for 27 years is part social housing. It is also the subject of the UK’s longest-running pothole dispute, with the county council refusing to resurface the stretch of Whitebarns Lane that links its 30-odd homes to village amenities including a primary school, church and bus stop, and residents refusing to resign themselves to a life of punctured tires and falling in the mud.