Pothole damage!

mml224

Hi folks, so a few weeks ago, I hit a pothole which caused damage to my nearside front tyre. Knowing I potentially had a claim, and after the tyre centre agreed the nature of the damage was impact, and stated this on my receipt, I decided to attempt a claim.
I went on to the LA website, and filled in their standard form for the claim. 
On the 10 May I pinpointed the location on their map, and gave a lat/long as well as what I would describe as a good enough description of the location of the pothole. 

On the 20 May they finally got back to me to suggest I had not given enough data as to the location of the pothole.
Now at this point, I thought I would try to get coordinates from Google maps, and while there, I had a look at the images. Interestingly, the pothole was quite visible, it was smaller, but had lines painted around it (which had in themselves been swallowed up by the pothole).
The google earth image had been taken in October last year! So clearly the pothole either did not appear large enough to be a concern or they had put off repairing.
I also went back to the site, and guess what! The pothole had been filled in!!!

26th May they finaly said they would process the request and talk to their client as to the nature of the pothole and if they had fullfilled the obligatory requirements.

Finally on the 23rd June I got the following response...

"We can confirm our enquiries are complete.

Having checked our client's records we note that they have in place a system of routine highway inspections. The area in question is routinely inspected 3 times a year in addition to ad-hoc inspections being carried out in between their routine inspections when reports/complaints of defects are made.

When the area was last routinely inspected on the 27/01/2022 prior to your incident, no defect was apparent or actionable at that time and no other reports/complaints in question were made to our client regarding the defect prior to your incident. In support of this we attach relevant documents pertaining to the Highways inspections.

Section 58 of the Highways act deals with our client's obligations to carry out inspections of the highway taking into account various considerations such as frequency of use, character and location. If our client can demonstrate that thy do operate a valid and reasonable inspection system, and that when a location was last inspected the defect in question was not present or actionable and no reports/complaints of the defect in question are made to our client prior to an incident then they will be able to put forward a defence to a claim of this nature.

Accordingly whilst we do sympathise; as our client has not acted negligently or breached their statutory obligations, we are unable to offer any compensation and advise that liability is denied on behalf of our client."

So, I feel there has been a bit of foul play here. They appeared very quick to cover the hole once I had made a claim. They have apparently last checked in the pothole in January, and are obliged to check 3 times a year, but what that exactly means I cannot be sure - every 3 months i.e. Jan - Ap, May - Aug, Sept - Dec...? Is it worth pursuing an FOI regarding more information about the check in January as outlined in the letter above? If I had evidence to show there had not been any difference to the pothole since then I would surely have a valid claim?

Any advice would be appreciated. It's cost me nearly £200 for two front tyres, the old ones had plenty of life left in them and I am out of pocket because a wealthy LA could not be arsed maintaining their roads properly!

So bloody ******!

Pictures are available if requested.

Thanks.

Grumpy_chap

mml224 said:

Hi folks, so a few weeks ago, I hit a pothole which caused damage to my nearside front tyre. 

It's cost me nearly £200 for two front tyres, 

Why did you need two front tyres?
Did you try to claim both from the LA? - they may have seen that as opportunistic.

Ectophile

Since when have local authorities been wealthy?  Most of them are laying off staff year after year, and can barely keep public services running with the handful of people they have left.

The default response to any pothole claim will always be "no".  There is no reason for them to do otherwise.  A significant proportion of people will give up and go away.  They hope that only a small proportion of the remaining claims will be successful, because they will do nothing to assist the claimant.  It's up to you to prove that they were negligent in allowing the pothole to be there.

Grey_Critic

Ectophile said:

Since when have local authorities been wealthy?  ft.

Nothing wrong with legitimate claims but people do forget that just like government they do not have any money.

The money they use to pay a claim is what is gathered in taxes - whenever they pay out then basically something else will not get done as there will be no money or we all suffer because taxes have to go up.

As a motorist I am fed up of buying the petrol station when I fill up but if the government were to reduce fuel duty then we would still pay for it somewhere else.

mml224

Grumpy_chap said:

mml224 said:

Hi folks, so a few weeks ago, I hit a pothole which caused damage to my nearside front tyre. 

It's cost me nearly £200 for two front tyres, 

Why did you need two front tyres?
Did you try to claim both from the LA? - they may have seen that as opportunistic.

Well since when is it safe to replace a single tire? I have had to pay out a lot of money that I cannot afford because the local authority failed to maintain the roads. Nothing opportunistic here, when I still had months, maybe up to a year of use for the tires/

It's an absolute joke if you ask me!

Grumpy_chap

mml224 said:

Well since when is it safe to replace a single tire? 

Since forever.

Bigphil1474

OP, the council doesn't get paid to maintain the roads pothole free. What it has to do is to check the roads on a regular basis and carry out repairs when required. Your quest is to prove that the council should have repaired the pothole before you drove over it, not that the pothole shouldn't have been there.
 
If you have the Google street view from 8 months before showing the pothole, then that might be enough to appeal their decision, but even so, it is pushing it expecting the council to pay for 2 tyres when only 1 was damaged by the pothole. It can be safe to replace a single tyre, millions of people do it all the time, just depends on the relative state of the tyre on the other corner (Would you replace both tyres if you had a puncture?). Pretty much the reason some cars have spare tyres.

Sandtree

mml224 said:

So, I feel there has been a bit of foul play here. They appeared very quick to cover the hole once I had made a claim. They have apparently last checked in the pothole in January, and are obliged to check 3 times a year, but what that exactly means I cannot be sure - every 3 months i.e. Jan - Ap, May - Aug, Sept - Dec...? Is it worth pursuing an FOI regarding more information about the check in January as outlined in the letter above? If I had evidence to show there had not been any difference to the pothole since then I would surely have a valid claim?

There are 12 months in a year so if you are inspecting 3 times a year you'd expect there to be approximately 4 months between each in section so if last inspection was 27/1 then next one would be about 27/5. So if you hit it on the 20/5 it would have been comfortably within the 4 month cycle (an inspection every 3 months would result in 4 a year)

If you were to go down the FOI request, or even just a normal claims negotiation, I'd be looking at trying to get a year or so's worth of reports for the inspection of the road to try and capture whoever/whenever it was that the paint was added around it which would signify that someone at some point had at least some level of concern.

Manxman_in_exile

If you have a google street view that shows that the pothole existed and had been marked for repair in October 1921, I'd be inclined to go back to the insurer and point out the seeming* discrepancy between this evidence and their client's assertion that there was no pothole in January 2022.

Can't see you being able to claim for 2 tyres though...

* Of course it could have been fixed before January 2022 and reappeared since January 2022

Ibrahim5

I don't think Google existed in 1921.

Sandtree

Manxman_in_exile said:

If you have a google street view that shows that the pothole existed and had been marked for repair in October 1921, I'd be inclined to go back to the insurer and point out the seeming* discrepancy between this evidence and their client's assertion that there was no pothole in January 2022.

Can't see you being able to claim for 2 tyres though...

* Of course it could have been fixed before January 2022 and reappeared since January 2022

The letter states "the defect in question was not present or actionable". In my reading at least that could mean that it was present but wasn't at the level of severity that required action at that time.