Pothole compensation claims fall but still average one every 18 minutes
Almost 29,000 drivers made claims against councils across Great Britain for damage caused to their vehicles by potholes in the last financial year.
Between them, the 200 (out of a total of 207) local highways authorities in England, Scotland and Wales which responded fully and in a standard format to FOI requests by the RAC Foundation dealt with 28,971 compensation claims in 2014/15.
This is roughly one claim every 18 minutes day and night, 365 days a year.
This compares with the previous financial year when drivers made 48,945 claims; one every 11 minutes.
Councils refused the bulk of claims, agreeing to pay out in just 25% of cases (down from 26% in 2013/14). However this average masks huge differences between councils. While Bury paid out in 88% of cases and Plymouth 86%, 21 councils paid out nothing at all.
However the average settlement amount for a successful claim was up from £286 to £294.
The figures do not take into account either the size of the authority or the traffic volumes on their roads and hence there is no assessment of the rate of claims per mile of road under management or rate of claims per vehicle mile.
The total value of successful claims was £2 million.
This is link to a full set of tables of all local authorities in Britain in both alphabetical order and ranked by number of claims received in 2014/15:
This is a link to English local authorities ranked by number of claims received in 2014/15:
This is a link to Welsh local authorities ranked by number of claims received in 2014/15:
This is a link to Scottish local authorities ranked by number of claims received in 2014/15:
