HASLEMERE Town Council agreed to donate £1,000 to help pay for vital repairs needed to improve a dangerously potholed private road used to get to and from Grayshott Surgery.

A long-running campaign to improve Boundary Road, an unadopted bridleway – historically used as a short cut between Headley Road and Crossways Road – went up a gear with the recent launch of an action group to try and speed up surface improvements.

Boundary Road Residents’ Association has been trying to resolve the problem and has been joined by the new Boundary Road Action Group.

Resurfacing the road and a footpath would cost between £35,000 and £50,000. The association has contacted MPs in Surrey and Hampshire – and both county councils – to try and get the funding needed.

East Hampshire District Council leader Ferris Cowper, who is also Grayshott’s county councillor, is backing the campaign.

He said: “The stretch from Headley Road to the surgery has been maintained at various times by the surgery and Hampshire County Council on an ex gratis basis. But legal and budgetary concerns have terminated the ex ratio work by the county council.

“Because Hampshire County Council will not adopt the road and the cost of any improvements will have to be born by the frontages, it’s important that everything possible is done to give any new surface the maximum possible life.”

The county boundary runs down the middle of Boundary Road but it is considered to lie within Hampshire because it begins and ends there.

Surrey County Council was approached to contribute £10,000 towards the resurfacing plan, but Haslemere Town Council was told it had declined any financial help, because it is a private unadopted road.

Haslemere’s county councillor Nikki Barton said: “It’s not just the cost of the initial treatment, it means taking responsibility going forward. That’s why Surrey maybe doesn’t want to take responsibility.”

Hindhead councillor Michael Dover said: “It may be the surgery has outgrown the site, but that’s no reason to prevent safe access to it.”

“We are not going to give up. If Surrey has been so churlish, we should consider taking out a public loan.”