A motorist has had his car written off after crashing down a pothole on a major route into and out of St Albans.

Now his angry father is questioning why county council contractors Ringway did not put cones around the hole before it was repaired to prevent the same thing happening to other drivers.

Peter Folling, of London Colney, said his son, also named Peter, hit the pothole on the opposite side from H.R.Owen car sales in Watford Road, St Albans, last Wednesday, January 8, and had pulled into the Shell garage on the Noke roundabout to see the extent of the damage.

He said when Peter got to the petrol station, there were 11 other vehicles which had gone down the same pothole and suffered varying degrees of damage. One was a brand-new Mini which had its wheel shattered.

Mr Folling’s son was subsequently told that repairs to his Volvo saloon would be in the region of £800 and the age of the vehicle meant it was a write off.

He contacted the county council and was told that he would have to claim on his own insurance and then make a claim on theirs which would probably result in a court appearance.

Although the pothole had been reported to Ringway by a neighbour who saw the damage it was causing, it was the police who eventually came out and coned it off. It has now been filled in.

Mr Folling said: “You pay all that road tax to be on the road and you can understand how my son feels.”

Matthew Kelley, Ringway divisional manager, working on behalf of the county council, said: “We carried out a routine safety inspection on Watford Road on January 7, 2014. Some potholes were recorded and were subsequently repaired on January 8, 2014. None of these were in the location described, we are further investigating this report.”