Pothole claim failure Wilts and Hants councils

MichaelSh68

Hello, need some help please. Have 2 claims refused despite evidence provided. Cracked wheel and subsequent tyre damage from pothole. Refused on grounds of council regular checks and hole not reported. Sent them a photo of the hole but refused. Sent them a photo of white lines they had sprayed and subsequent repair, still no joy. My claim was for £43 only.
Second claim was for almost £500 due to tyre damage x 1 car on dangerous road, no recovery via insurance due to danger, Police could not leave me and car there so arranged their recovery contractor, I paid for transport from home to contractor, repairs and recovery plus release fees. Submitted claim and refused. Same reasons, council had evidence they conducted regular detailed inspections and if I didn't like it then I can try and take them to court. Both cases very similar despite amounts attempted to claim. At whitts end because I'm just a simple tax payer up against the system. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

DE_612183

Unfortunately you can never win in these cases - most councils point out that you should have avoided the pothole and not doing so is actually driving with undue care and attention.

Question they will ask you is: "Why did you drive into a pothole?" - what will your answer be?

tacpot12

Do you have home insurance? if so check to see if you have legal expenses cover. If you do, call the legal helpline provided by your insurer for advice, but be aware that the council have to be negligent for you to have a claim. How will you show that they have been negligent?

If they haven't been negligent, you have no claim.

Mildly_Miffed

MichaelSh68 said:

Second claim was for almost £500 due to tyre damage x 1 car on dangerous road, no recovery via insurance due to danger, Police could not leave me and car there so arranged their recovery contractor, I paid for transport from home to contractor, repairs and recovery plus release fees.

Even if they did accept liability for the damage to the tyre, the rest would never be part of a valid claim.

Ectophile

Councils have worked out that they can save money by never admitting responsibility.  And councils are all short of money at the moment.

If you think you can win, you'd have to start court action.  At that point, the council may have another look and work out whether they are likely to win or lose.  If they think they will lose, they may offer an out of court settlement.  Otherwise they will defend the case.

Bigphil1474

Not sure that's accurate. Councils can only make repairs when they know there's a problem, and will only do appropriate repairs depending on the condition at the time. They will also inspect their roads in line with their policy. If they have failed to do any of that they are liable, if they have done that , they aren't. Given councils have 1000's of miles of roads to look after, they are unlikely to know about a lot of pot holes if nobody reports them. They don't have teams of people checking every road every day. They don't just deny responsibility without checking, albeit they are more likely to deny responsibility than admitting it - I think that will be because they mainly aren't responsible as the rules currently sit.

DullGreyGuy

tacpot12 said:

Do you have home insurance? if so check to see if you have legal expenses cover. If you do, call the legal helpline provided by your insurer for advice, but be aware that the council have to be negligent for you to have a claim. How will you show that they have been negligent?

If they haven't been negligent, you have no claim.

Home insurance LE will typically exclude anything related to motorised vehicles other than purchase/sale and instead will tell you to claim on your Car insurance. 

MichaelSh68 said:

Hello, need some help please. Have 2 claims refused despite evidence provided. Cracked wheel and subsequent tyre damage from pothole. Refused on grounds of council regular checks and hole not reported. Sent them a photo of the hole but refused. Sent them a photo of white lines they had sprayed and subsequent repair, still no joy. My claim was for £43 only.
Second claim was for almost £500 due to tyre damage x 1 car on dangerous road, no recovery via insurance due to danger, Police could not leave me and car there so arranged their recovery contractor, I paid for transport from home to contractor, repairs and recovery plus release fees. Submitted claim and refused. Same reasons, council had evidence they conducted regular detailed inspections and if I didn't like it then I can try and take them to court. Both cases very similar despite amounts attempted to claim. At whitts end because I'm just a simple tax payer up against the system. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Have you informed your motor insurers of both the incidents? It's a common trick for Councils to advise you that they will be informing them given it's a breach of contract if you have "forgotten" to tell them. That puts off a lot of people. 

Councils effectively have to abide by their own rules and so the only way you can show they are liable is by showing they breached their own rules. This typically is on the frequency that the road must be inspected and then checking the inspection records or if the pothole has been identified/ reported then dealing with it within the timescales their rules say (which is often a risk based approach based on size, road classification, position in the road etc) -v- the details of the potholes at the time it was inspected/reported. Most of these can easily be obtained via a FoI request to the council. 

DE_612183 said:

Question they will ask you is: "Why did you drive into a pothole?" - what will your answer be?

The final test when I did my motor liability training was a case where effectively a council's instructions resulted in a lamppost being 2' into the road on a hill and a driver drove into it shortly after dawn. 

Whilst most of us said it would be 100% the motorists fault as they ultimate hit a static object the court ruled 80/20 in the councils favour broadly agreeing that it was there to be seen and avoided and though the driver had said the sun was low etc so he was blinded the judge said that just meant he wasnt driving appropriately for the road conditions. 

The council did have to pay 20% of the damage though as it was deemed that they have a heightened duty of care and leaving a lamppost 2' into a road was not taking the level of care a council should have when instructing the works.