RESIDENTS who have waited 25 years for road repairs around their homes are in despair.

People living in The Rise, Fairview, Blackwood, are furious that they have had to put up with a rear lane riddled with deep potholes for years.

Over that time they have improvised by filling in the gaping holes with rocks and ash from their fires - but they now claim the lane has become impossible to drive on and some locals cannot even get to their garages because of the poor surface.

Resident Bryan Spacey, (pictured) 62, believes the lane was never surfaced by builders because of an agreement with the former Islwyn borough council.

He says there have been repeated assurances over the past 25 years that the lane would be adopted by the highways department of the council.

Residents enlisted the help of Islwyn MP Don Touhig. Mr Spacey said the MP had tried very hard to bring about a resolution, but had not been successful.

Mr Spacey said: "It's absolutely horrendous trying to manoeuvre the back lane - your cars just jump all over the place.

"All we want is 50 yards of lane surfaced and if they were to give me the equipment I would do it myself."

Now the residents have learned the lane has been placed at the back of the list of Caerphilly council's priorities.

Pengam councillor Noel Turner said: "This issue has been rumbling on for a long time and I have a lot of sympathy with the residents because they have a legitimate grievance, to say the least.

"However the problem is that the previous administration gave the residents the wrong advice, as they should have been told to put themselves down on the list for back lane improvements.

"They were only told they had to do this two-and-a-half years ago. "The other problem is that we have a limited budget and we can only do two or three lane adoptions a year and we literally have dozens on the list.

"I cannot see their lane can be done in the next two or three years."