I would like to bring you a success story of potholes, petitions and persistent pester power.

Phil Parsons has been campaigning for 15 months to get rid of the potholes outside his home in Mannock Drive - a popular cut through in Loughton.

Having moved into his house in December 2012 he only realised the scale of the pothole problem days later.

He said: “I was upstairs and felt the whole house shake. After a while I realised it happened every time someone drove past the house.

“Sometimes it happens at one or two in the morning and it has caused a picture in my children’s bedroom to fall off the wall.”

Mr Parsons took it upon himself to rid the road of ruts in January 2013, ensuring Essex County Council has heard from him every two weeks since.

The courageous crater campaigner put together a petition signed by people living in the 14 houses in his road and will now see the troublesome tarmac resurfaced next week.

Next-door neighbour Maria Bereta, 77, has suffered from the traffic induced trembling of her house for the 17 years she has lived there.

She said: “It shakes like jelly. It’s terrible, sometimes the whole house shakes and people drive like mad up and down here.

“It’s bad all the time.”

Diane Mace, 54, who lives on the other side of the road from Mr Parsons, said: “The whole place shakes when the lorries and vans come down here.

“It makes you jump up every time, hopefully it will be a lot quieter and allow us to relax a lot more when it’s resurfaced.”

Around 50 meters of the road, commonly used by parents on the school run to the nearby St John Fisher Primary School in the adjoining Burney Drive, will be totally resurfaced from Monday to Friday next week.