Anyone claimed against Pothole damage?

The law is something like council is required to have an effective inspection and maintenance schedule. The council will have a policy setting out how frequently they inspect each category of roads.

They will only pay out if the inspections weren't carried out when they should have been or issues were identified/reported and not rectified.

If the road is inspected every 2 years and they inspected it a year ago and a pothole has since appeared which no one had reported, they will say they've fulfilled the legal obligation.
 
I did a claim once. Took over 6 months to get settled. Took photos and tape measurements in photos for claim. Got there eventually.
 
And with no surprises at all, my email arrived stating that they will not be offering any form of compensation. The council did all that was legally required - paraphrase, tough s***.
Decision not open to review, but of course we can't stop you pursuing legal action.......
I honestly don't know why I bothered risking life & limb to go and photograph the missing part of the road that was apparently inspected 30 days prior to my incident, when there was absolutely nothing to see.

To be fair, I'd already written the £160 off in my head, but still - there seems to be a massive gap here.
If they are told about something they are given some undetermined amount of time to go fix it. If it hasn't got a yellow box around it, they will just claim it was inspected in the last month and nothing was seen - there is no way the damage that killed my tire was new and was obviously a defect with the last time they tried to repair it.
But all they need to do is say "Yer mate, of course it was inspected" and that then only leaves time consuming and costly legal options.
 
I've learnt its best to just avoid the pot holes. I'm one of those drivers you may see swerving to miss potholes as I'll perform just about any maneuver to avoid a pothole.
In the rare case that a pothole can't be avoided I will slow down to 2mph to drive over it even if I have to make all the traffic behind me stop as well, because the traffic won't pay to repair my tyres or wheels so screw them.

One way to get them to repair a pothole quickly is to grab a can of spray paint and draw a penis around the pothole. I don't condone this but it does work
 
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Grim5 said:
I've learnt its best to just avoid the pot holes. I'm one of those drivers you may see swerving to miss potholes as I'll perform just about any maneuver to avoid a pothole.
In the rare case that a pothole can't be avoided I will slow down to 2mph to drive over it even if I have to make all the traffic behind me stop as well, because the traffic won't pay to repair my tyres or wheels so screw them.

One way to get them to repair a pothole quickly is to grab a can of spray paint and draw a penis around the pothole. I don't condone this but it does work
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Why didn't i think of that? Just drive around it - genius!

1030pm, no streetlights, no yellow paint around the hole (fnar! fnar!), no traffic cone or warning - it really was a "wtf did i just hit" moment.

Ofc i would have driven around it if i could have seen it, same as OP no doubt.
 
Hit a nasty one in the middle of the A34 while changing lane, destroyed the rubber and cracked an alloy (there were chubby tyres on a Lexus GS too). Managed to measure and photograph the 3ft long crater that caused it in the middle of the night while waiting for recovery. Claim is still "being processed" 4 years later and I've had 2 cars since :D
 
Spray paint a giant penis round it, then tell the council someone painted a giant penis around it. That seems to get them out.
 
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Double puncture and potentially two broken alloys last night. Also took out the car in front and the AA van which came to rescue her. I couldn't take any pics last night because I had my kids in the car and my priority was getting them home safely. I'm going to find a way of getting back over there this morning. Posting here for advice and so I don't lose this thread.
 
Jonny69 said:
Double puncture and potentially two broken alloys last night. Also took out the car in front and the AA van which came to rescue her. I couldn't take any pics last night because I had my kids in the car and my priority was getting them home safely. I'm going to find a way of getting back over there this morning. Posting here for advice and so I don't lose this thread.
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Took out the car and the AA van too?! That is crazy stuff. Sounds like a very dangerous hole.

Take photos of the hole and your damaged tyres. Also, check on the fixmystreet website to see if it's already been reported.
 
Jonny69 said:
Double puncture and potentially two broken alloys last night. Also took out the car in front and the AA van which came to rescue her. I couldn't take any pics last night because I had my kids in the car and my priority was getting them home safely. I'm going to find a way of getting back over there this morning. Posting here for advice and so I don't lose this thread.
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The sticking point is whether the council or whomever is responsible for the road has been made aware of it. If they haven't then you have zero chance of a claim.
 
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Whilst we are on the subject of potholes


Do you know if you can force a complaint about a local council and specific roads which are peppered with stones? either from work that has not been cleaned up (roadworks) on main roads for instance, or damaged by weather causing loose stones that have not been dealt with ?


these are just as bad a potholes, as driving over roads peppered with stones also cause windscreen damage, and also pain chip damage on your car

IMO these roads should have roadsweepers deployed out


I was driving down a road which is a 50/60 mph limited road last week, it was peppered with loose stones which had clearly been left over and not cleaned up from recent work. No signpostes stating warnings against it, the result was stone had flicked up and put damage in the windscreen.
 
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Jonny69 said:
It's the yellow unlabelled road between Old Chertsey Road and Chertsey Road A319 here: https://www.fixmystreet.com/around?js=1&pc=gu24+8hr

Edit: this one is probably closest to the actual location: https://www.fixmystreet.com/report/8765641

Does that mean it's been reported to the council or not?
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Reading the report, it looks like it was sent to Surrey County Council last night.

This report is waiting to be assigned to a Highways Inspector who will aim to complete the inspection within 5 working days. During times of high report volumes, reports may take longer to be assigned to an Inspector and resolve than the specified timeframe. You can select Get updates to be kept informed as the work progresses.
Posted by Surrey County Council at 20:18, Sunday
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There's also 3 other reports on that same road, all mentioning the pothole, albeit slightly distanced from each other, but I assume it's the same pothole.

Oldest report was Saturday, so this does sound very recent.
 
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