NO more loose chippings are to be laid in Oxfordshire until next summer, the county council has said.
The council’s programme of applying chippings to 60 roads across the county is now complete, bringing relief to motorists and cyclists.
The resurfacing is the cheapest way of improving road surfaces, but drivers have complained of damage to their cars, while cyclists have warned piles of chippings can cause dangerous skids.
County council spokesman, Owen Morton, confirmed fresh chippings would not be re-laid until next summer.
He said: “There will be a programme of surface dressing next summer, similar to that which has taken place in recent weeks.
“The locations have yet to be confirmed, but surface dressing takes place on sections of road each year during the summer.”
He said there had only been “a small number of complaints” about loose chippings from across the county.
David and Dorothy Holloway, of Wenrisc Drive, Minster Lovell, said a chipping thrown up by a council lorry had cracked the windscreen of their Kia Sportage on Tuesday, May 25.
Mrs Holloway, 62, said the lorry was driving more than 20mph, and she has asked the county council to compensate the £60 she paid of her insurance excess.
She said: “My husband said it was like driving through machine gun fire.
“We were going down the Burford Road towards Witney, and the lorry shot out of the road being gritted doing more than 20mph, and bang went our windscreen.
“It was like a gun shot going off.”
The council has told her that while all claims are normally processed within three months, the couple may face a longer delay because of a high volume of complaints received by the highways department in recent months.
Mr Morton said many of those complaints related to potholes in the roads rather than chippings.
James Styring, of cyclists’ group Cyclox, said problems with chippings were more common in the countryside, where piles of stones six inches deep could accumulate.
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