Pothole damaged my car

Kitty_Kat

I drove over a pothole and it cause damaged to my wheel. I had to pay over £100 to repair the car, made a claim to the local council with a detailed description of what happened and photos. They wrote back saying that they won't pay for the repairs. I wrote back to them saying that their decision was unfair. Can anyone give me advice on what I should do now?


Thanks in advance

emeraldbugle

I would persist, if the road is owned by them, then they have a duty to keep it in a good condition. Have you sent a picture with a ruler in there showing how deep it was?

Did they say why they wouldn't foot the bill?

steve_r123

We are currently going through the same thing for my girlfriends car. The council have said they wont pay because the road had been inspected x amount of weeks beforehand and the pothole wasnt there.

We now need to focus on the inspection of the road. Does anyone know what qualifications (if any) you have to hold in order to have authority to say the road is serviceable?

There is very little information on the web about this type of claim unfortunately, but from what I have read some councils just cough up straight away, and other fight tooth and nail not to pay. Just looks like we have got the latter councils to deal with

derrick

Kitty_Kat wrote:

I drove over a pothole and it cause damaged to my wheel. I had to pay over £100 to repair the car, made a claim to the local council with a detailed description of what happened and photos. They wrote back saying that they won't pay for the repairs. I wrote back to them saying that their decision was unfair. Can anyone give me advice on what I should do now?


Thanks in advance

Tell them,in writing by recorded delivery, you are going to issue a County Court summons in 14 days if they do not pay up,if they still refuse, or do not reply, issue the summons, it will cost you £30 but that will be repaid when you win at Court,(it won't even get there as it will not be worth there while and expense to fight a £100, + £30 costs case), once they get the summons you will get the offer of settlement.

ttoli

Had a very similar situation to this, Council lorry hit my car, ripping off the wing and drove off, i managed to track them down and the driver admitted liability, gave me his home address and d.licence dets, then 2 witnesses came forward + a neighbours cctv capturing it.
Councils ins co. denied liability, dragged on for 6 months, day after they were summonsed they paid up in full. It truly amazed me that despite the drivers admission, 2 independant witnesses and cctv coverage they denied liability, fight on, they are hoping that you give up trying.

Good Luck

mrbadexample

Second post in THIS thread may assist some?

Kitty_Kat

The council stated in there letter "there is no automatic right to compensation from the council. Before any recompense can be nade it must be demonstrated that we have, in some way, ben negligent. The council has a legal defence if it can demonstrate it has a reasonable system of Highway inspection in place. The road in question is inspected twice yearly on foot.The inspection prior to your accident was on 23 March (the pothole incident occurred in June) At that time no actionable defect was present."

The letter ended with "It has to reply on reports of problems from members of the public"

I am a member of the public and I did report the pothole after i drove over it!!

Derrick thanks for your comment, but how do you go about getting a County Court Summons?

mrbadexample thanks for the example letters and I will send one to the council and see waht they do.

derrick

Kitty_Kat wrote:

Derrick thanks for your comment, but how do you go about getting a County Court Summons?

You should be able to get all the info from HERE, have never done it online, but I believe it is very simple, click on the "online services"

Astaroth

Basically if they can prove they have an adequate system in place then it is up to you to prove that they were negligent - the most common way of doing this is to prove that 1) they were aware of the issue 2) they had reasonable time to fix it.

With the low success rate on these types of cases, when I worked in claims we would never issue proceedings as it was throwing good money after bad though a few customers did issue off their own backs and as far as I am aware all of them lost their case. In one case however the council managed to get the case moved from the small track into the fast track of the court which ment they could then claim legal costs against him (dont know the details of why the court agreed the claim was complex enough to warrent the higher track's attention)

taxiphil

I think your argument would be that inspecting the road only twice a year is completely inadequate. Roads need inspecting far more frequently. Potholes can appear in a matter of a few days. I think you have a very strong case.

The actual website for issuing a County Court claim online is https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk - it's really easy to use and there's loads of information about it on this forum if you have a search.

Astaroth

Thankfully the whole basis of negligence is on reasonableness. The op said the inspection occured 3 months prior so on that basis it could be they inspect the road 4 times a year rather than 2 - what also needs to be taken into consideration is what sort of road it is, you would expect the council to inspect major roads much more frequently than you would minor back roads or residential closes etc. Given the hundreds of miles of road surface within a council juristiction it is not reasonable to expect them to inspect it every few days as you seem to be suggesting Phil - unless of cause you are happy to double your council tax to pay for the army of road inspectors it would require.

The online site is only useful for actually registering the claim and handling it in cases where neither liability or quantum are disputed - if it is disputed then you get pushed down the normal "physical" court route.