I'm surprised by the sympathy on here as you were clearly traveling to quickly for the conditions to (not) miss something that large.
I'm surprised by this statement. Yes, this is a very large pothole, but at 7am on an unlit road, it is often very hard to tell how big a pothole is before you're on top of it, even at fairly sedate speeds. Especially in wet weather, it's hard to tell what's a pothole and what's nothing more than a large puddle, so it's unfair to say he was travelling too quickly for the conditions.
Consider the depth of the pothole - at 7 inches deep that's like hitting a kerbstone, in which case he can't have been going very quickly at all, or he would have lost the whole wheel, not just buckled it.
As for claiming off the council it's Christmas and we've had a lot of rain so the damage is likely to be fairly recent, do you expect them to have workmen on call 24/7 to fix reported holes or is it reasonable to allow them a few days to fix it as most people are on holiday?
Most councils will have a term maintenance contract with a highway maintenance company who should be tasked to responding to such repairs as quickly as possible. Given that it's already been reported then yes, I would expect the council to be taking appropriate action through their contractor to ensure it's patched ASAP, especially when you consider the damage inflicted - the OP is lucky he was in a car, hitting a pothole of that size on a motorbike (or even a pedal bike) could prove fatal.
