Legal News

A nationwide survey has revealed that local authorities who are themselves facing difficult times with cash have paid out £4.8million in claims by motorists who have suffered damage to their cars due to the bad conditions of the roads and potholes in the last two years.
It has emerged that one in eight motorists have had suffered damages to their cars on roads after two harsh winters.
With no data from two out of three councils surveyed the compensation bill could well be up to £15million in the period.
Surrey County Council alone has spent more than £630,000 of taxpayers’ money since 2010 on 3,650 payouts to motorists for vehicle damage caused by neglected roads and potholes.
Britannia Rescue issued Freedom of Information requests to 434 city, district, borough and county councils.

Some 143 responded with at least one piece of data, while 291 still to respond, said that they did not keep the data, or that they were not responsible for road maintenance in their area.

Since 2010, more than 54,000 compensation claims have been made to the councils in Britain that supplied figures to the survey.

The claims ranged from potholes ruining wheel rims to punctured tyres and damaged suspension between 2010-11 and 2011-12.

The combination of a wet summer and a cold winter had left the road surfaces, with potholes forming after water seeped down below the road surface and freezes, loosening the asphalt.

According to the data, the average repair bill was £132, with some claims as high as £3,000.

At the same time, the average cost of repairing a pothole was around £50, meaning the amount paid out by councils in compensation could have been used to repair more than 96,000 potholes.

Road maintenance was severely under-funded with estimates that just £17 per driver was spent on maintaining road surfaces and fixing potholes, amounting to 11 per cent of the annual road tax bill.

Peter Horton, managing director of Britannia Rescue, said that the past two harsh winters had caused significant damage to the UK’s roads, which has not been fully repaired yet.

Cuts in road maintenance funding meant that local authorities had very difficult choices to make on the roads they prioritise for repair.

He added that motorists should take extra care and keep an eye out for potholes and maintain low speeds, particularly in wet weather when holes may be filled by rain.