With any luck the local and national media will be filled with celebratory photographs of England’s World Cup heroes today following a brilliant win over Croatia last night.

At the time of writing this column and, in the absence of a crystal ball, I am daring to dream of an England versus France World Cup final.

It is hard not to get swept up in football fever at the moment but, for me, football is coming home whatever the result as the lads have done us proud.

Some of the council’s unsung heroes have also been in the limelight over the past four weeks as part of a campaign we have been running on social media to promote the work we do to repair potholes on the borough’s roads.

As I explained in an earlier column, potholes are one of those key issues that really matter to residents and our campaign has sought to raise awareness of the work of our hard-working team, while also encouraging the public to report any potholes to us so we can get the road network in the best possible shape over the summer months.

We all know the UK’s roads are far from perfect. Tackling potholes is a never-ending challenge that councils up and down the country have to manage as best they can with limited resources.

Our communications team, working closely with colleagues in highways, have produced a wide range of engaging content explaining how repairs are carried out and dispelling some myths about what may or may not constitute a pothole.

Some of the videos and posts produced by the team are well worth a view and they have proved extremely effective in engaging with residents on this important topic.

On Facebook for example, our posts throughout the last month have reached 110,000 people which includes more than 14,000 views of our video content. Our top video on how we carry out pothole repairs has been watched 3,076 times alone, while our posts on Twitter reached more than 60,000 people.

The main focus of the campaign was to encourage residents to report potholes because our highways inspectors are limited in terms of how often they can inspect our 510-mile road network.

In the first three weeks of the campaign we received 78 reports of potholes and, during the same period, we repaired 275 potholes on our roads and a further 72 on our footpaths – a total of 347 repairs.

Over the course of the last year, our team repaired more than 8,000 potholes which just goes to show the extent of the problem we are trying to address in the light of recent harsh winters.

If you’ve reported a pothole as a result of the campaign, thank you. If you haven’t and you spot a pothole on one of the borough’s roads or footpaths please visit www.swindon.gov.uk/potholes and tell us all about it.