Potholes cost £3.2 million

Published Date: 2nd Feb 2015

UK Councils paid out £3.2 million in pothole damage compensation but gave the green light to less than a quarter of all pothole claims

 

The compensation claims hit a new high for pothole damage, with one made every 11 minutes by motorists in Great Britain last year, council figures

show.Close to 50,000 drivers submitted claims in 2013/14, with councils around England, Scotland and Wales paying out £3.2 million, according to a report by the RAC Foundation.

However, less than 25 percent of the 48,664 pothole claims were approved across Great Britain, with this dropping to as low as 18 per cent in Wales.

The number of claims in 2013/14 was up on the previous year, but the average payout for a successful claim was down from £357 to £286. The average administration cost of each claim – successful or not – was a total of £147, which is a lot of money just to process a claim.

Surrey finds itself top of the table for the highest number of claims submitted, with 3,912, but it only approved 20 per cent of these. This meant the council paid out £250,289. In second place was Essex with 2,548 claims, but that council signed off on less than four per cent of claims – equal to £156,008.

There is an estimated pothole backlog on British roads that stands at £12 billion, and the RAC Foundation, which researched the latest figures from Freedom of Information requests to all 207 councils, commented “the Government needed to prioritise transport spending with HS2 costing an estimated £50 billion”.

Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “These figures are likely to be the tip of the iceberg. Many drivers will be put off by the time involved in claiming against a council, and many councils do their best to deter claimants coming forward.

“But the fundamental problem lies not at the doors of our town halls but with central government. Despite occasional one-off grants related to periods of harsh weather, they are simply not giving councils enough money to keep their road networks up to scratch.

“Worn-out road surfaces do not simply cause damage to vehicles; they are also potentially lethal, particularly for two-wheeled road users."