POTHOLE squads face abuse from motorists while at work on Glasgow's roads.

The Evening Times joined a team of men working to repair serious winter damage to Edinburgh Road.

And they told us how passing motorists will hurl abuse - or even stop their cars to shout at workers.

George Duff, road supervisor for 20 years, was leading a team of five other men repairing potholes on the East End road.

He said: "We get it all the time. Usually we are out on the road trying to fix a problem and make things better but that doesn't stop people.

"They will shout and swear out the window on the way past or they will walk up and give you verbal abuse.

"You just say to them, 'No bother'. What else can you say?

"The roads are particularly bad because of the weather and I've seen them get worse over the 20 years I've been doing this job because there's more traffic on the roads - we can't do anything about either of those things."

We have been asking readers to help us identify Glasgow's biggest pothole as part of our #spothole campaign.

Norrie Campbell, Roads and Lighting Manager, took the Evening Times and councillor Anna Richardson, City Convener for Sustainability and Carbon Reduction, out to see the pothole squad in action.

They were working along Edinburgh Road, where the bus lanes are littered with potholes because of damage from the heavy vehicles - called "bus heave" and caused by the buses braking.

The crew is one of up to 30 out on the roads in any way day.

Our morning began in the "pothole room" in Glasgow City Chambers - a temporary control room set up to manage extra resources that Glasgow City Council are throwing at the city's roads.

Mr Campbell takes an overview of where crews are needed and sends them out across the city's 1220 miles of road.

When the bad weather hit in January, roads began to crack in the cold and so squads were sent out to look for potholes and do temporary patches.

As they started to get on top of the problem, a more targeted programme was brought into force.

During the "snow week" that ended on January 21 squads carried out 394 temporary repairs per day - 3546 over nine days - and an average of 27 squads were out each day.

From January 29 to February 8 some 1161 permanent repairs were completed.

Currently, there are 71 daily reports to the council of potholes but this peaked at 273 on January 31.

Mr Campbell said: "Across the city, 85 per cent of roads are in good condition.

"It doesn't frustrate me that people complain about the potholes. We need reports of where they are before we can fix them.

"But I don't think people realise the amount of resource that is being directed towards repairing the roads."

A temporary patch is designed to last for around one year - although readers have been flooding our inbox with images of patches they claim have last for mere weeks.

A permanent repair should last five to 10 years.

The temporary fix costs £10 per square metre while the permanent patch is £30 per square metre.

But council bosses claim they are working extra hours and weekends to make the problem better.

Ms Richardson said: "All this work goes unnoticed.

"These teams are doing the tough front line work that keeps the city moving, often in challenging conditions.

"We have managed to tackle so many potholes in the first few weeks of this year because of a focused use of our resources."