Bad weather, gritting and road works have left the roads littered with potholes which, some residents claim, are endangering lives and damaging vehicles.

In one incident, three cyclists were thrown off their bikes after hitting a hole on the A610. One of the men was left with concussion and bruises after the fall.

Hotspots in the town include Whitemoor Lane, High Street and Marsh Lane. Residents have also complained about the condition of Spencer Road, Queen Street and roads around The Clusters.

One resident said: "The turn in to Morrisons off the roundabout is awful. I thought I'd punctured a tyre when I first went over it without realising it was there. They've put a cone over it now."

Jim Banahan, secretary of the Belper and District Road Safety Committee, has urged the county council to act on pothole complaints.

He said: "Derbyshire County Council promised it would fix the potholes last autumn. With the amount of ice and snow we had deterioration was inevitable, and I think the council has become a little overwhelmed.

"All we can do really is remind people to contact the council if they see potholes and identify them by location. The council needs to know about them."

Potholes can cause damage to cars and can make driving dangerous, as road users can be thrown off course after hitting one of the holes, and they often have to swerve around the dips in the road.

Tony Goldstraw, of Belper Bicycle Club, said: "They do affect us in a lot of ways. We can sustain damage to the bikes. One lad went over his handlebars when he hit a pothole last week. It brought three of them
down in total.

"The potholes shouldn't be there. They can be very dangerous if you hit one."

More than 80 new potholes have been reported in Amber Valley since the beginning of December.

Derbyshire County Council, which maintains highways around the county, has promised to attend to the potholes during the normal process of road inspections. A spokesman for the authority said: "It's too early to say what the cost of road repairs will be as a result of extreme winter weather recently.

"We maintain more than 3,000 miles of roads in Derbyshire and we'll deal with problems – mainly potholes – during the normal course of our road inspections programme.

"But we may go out especially to roads that are more out of the way and would normally only get inspected once a year.

"Safety is our priority on the county's roads and our Improving Derbyshire Roads team are working flat out to deal with potholes as quickly as possible. Dangerous defects are being given top priority as normal."

On a national scale, the recent freezing conditions have been blamed for the increasing number of potholes. The holes form as water enters cracks in the road surface. As the water freezes, it expands, forcing cracks to open up and become potholes.

Experts predict it will cost millions to repair the damage and it is feared many cars will end up with damaged tyres or steering.

Last year, councils up and down the country spent £56million repairing potholes but that figure is expected to rise dramatically after the big freeze. The average cost of repairing a pothole is £56.

Experts say it would take engineers more than 11 years to repair every pothole in England and Wales.