A politician has called Haringey Borough Council’s pothole “blitz” a failure after only a third of the borough's holes were fixed in the target time.

According to opposition councillor Richard Wilson, only a third of potholes reported between May and the end of October were fixed within the seven-day target.

The Liberal Democrat councillor said the Labour-run council’s so called pothole blitz is more of a pothole crawl.

He said: “Years of neglect, caused by Labour’s past policy of allowing potholes to get deep before fixing them meant there was a massive backlog of potholes to fix.

“It is no surprise they missed their target of fixing potholes within seven days.

“Rather than cheap publicity stunts they should concentrate on providing a good service to local residents who pay the fifth highest council tax in London, yet receive terrible services.”

The pothole repair programme was announced in May following the case of a man who suffered brain injuries as a result of tripping over a pothole in Haringey.

Previously council would wait until a pothole was six centimetres deep before it was repaired.

The Stroud Green ward councillor added that the potholes need to be fixed before they cause more injuries and damage to cars.

A council spokesman said: “Since the start of the campaign, we have filled in approximately 4,400 potholes and our contractors have completed more than 1,600 repair jobs – a high number of which have seen them filling in multiple potholes.

“At the start of the blitz, we were receiving around 35 pothole reports a week from residents.

“Through our improved inspections schedule – including electronic reporting and intervening at a much earlier stage – we have seen the number of pothole reports reduce significantly to around 20 per week.”

According to the council’s Neighbourhood Action Team, between May 20 to June 30 only 163 of the total jobs reported were fixed within the seven-day target – 19 per cent of the total repair jobs completed.

From July onwards, a total of 393 repair jobs were completed within seven days, which represents 53 per cent of the finished repair jobs.

The average time taken to complete these jobs was 11 days.

The council spokesman added: “As the harsher weather approaches, we’ll be working closely with our contractor to deliver even speedier action on potholes and encourage residents to continue to report potholes on-the-go via the council’s mobile phone app or online.”