Potholes Cost the Council How Much?

We hit a pothole once on a normal inner-city Road. It caused the tyre to burst and badly damaged the wheel. We called the AA who came and got us mobile again. The AA guy said he would contact the council as the hole was bigger/deeper than allowed criteria. My partner went back early the next morning to photograph the offending hole so we could make a claim and to his surprise, it had been repaired! Overnight! It was obviously cheaper to send out a repair team than to pay numerous compensation claims! Didn’t help us though.

My area is bad for them the amount of accidents that happen is unbelievable

I think every area is as bad as most and will continue to be so as councils just don't have the money to resurface the roads properly.

I didnt realise you could do this. There are terrible pot holes near me.

I hate these, there are so many potholes at the moment. It makes me so angry when I don’t actually see one and drive over it

There's just too many and it damages car wheels

I read the other day that a government minister saying we are giving £500 million to councils.Problem is there are over 300 local authorities and the 500 million works out at £1.4 million each .But it would cost 10 BILLION to fix all potholes in the UK.Really put the £500 million into context and is litterally just a sticking plaster.

After leaving the EU with £1.8 trillion of debt and now adding 100s of billions to it due to the pandemic I can only see this getting worse. In the past roads were also very poor and cars were made with larger steel wheels and thicker rubber and we may have to go back to that rather than having modern low profile tyres and more easily damaged aluminium wheels. I personally don't think anyone should be able to claim for damage to their cars, that just takes more money away from councils that can't be used for repairs so makes the problem worse. Some cars are more easily damaged and they have made a choice of car which may not be suitable for roads in their area. Same situation with bicycles and mopeds you have to take responsibility for the way you drive or ride. Most countries in the world have potholes and also most of those you could never claim for damage to your vehicle because of them.

Many of these minor roads have been damaged by larger commercial vehicles making deliveries because of their greater weight. An extra tax on companies using heavier vehicles in built up areas i.e. an indirect tax on online shopping would also help the high street compete and perhaps help pay for repairs of minor roads. You also have to factor in electric vehicles are much heavier and so are SUV's compared to normal cars so we are accelerating wear with many modern cars. We really need to move to smaller vehicles and taxation should reflect that to punish those financially who drive heavy vehicles.

I'm sure there are creative ways to kill two birds with one stone and achieve 2 benefits from 1 action like that.

My son was recently on angila news about him hitting a pothole that was quite big. He wrote to the council for compensation and they refused to pay out. They replied telling him the pothole was no longer there it was filled in.

I wouldn't know much about potholes as I don't drive but I thought the point of people paying road tax would pay for stuff like this or have I got it all wrong?

Oh, yeah, that's an annoyance which sometimes I see and sometimes I don't. There's also that I don't want to drive on the other side, even when empty, because of the laws and safety.

Uneven pavements are also an issue. They're leading to a lot of compensation claims after people trip over uneven paving slabs and the like. It would take a lot of investment to fix this problem. Bad weather can make things worse. The risk is also exacerbated for the elderly and disabled pedestrians.

Wish the would fix the footpaths

My wheelchair is a nightmare

Please believe me when I say this as it is 100% true . By where I live there was 1 large pothole and 3 smaller 1's . Our council which is staffordshire county council and I reported it as did many others.

The problem is the council said it was the highways agency problem and after a while they said it was the councils responsabiliy .

They problem is the 2 different places delay until the last momentt . I would love to see how much each local authority pays out in compensation as I truly think they decide forget repairing them and with the money allocated for repairs and just use it to pay the compensation .