Query

9th March 2010

Hi,

I recently hit a pothole in my town which cause damange to both me wheel and my tyre. I have wrote to my council asking for compensation as it was a main road and thought they were liable.

By the looks of the posts on here I have been given the standard response back. Basically they have said that they carried out checks a couple of weeks before and saw no pot hole and that they have took reasonable steps so cannot be held liable.

My question is do i basically have no case if they can prove this to be true?

Even if I ask them to send my a copy of FOI document i presume this will just backup what they say.

Thanks for any help given

Replies (1)

Potholes.co.uk Expert     posted : 10/03/10 at 9:55 am

Yes .... if what they say is true, your claim will probably never succeed as local authorities are afforded a statutory defence against such claims.

However .... their actions are still subject to a test of reasonableness and the FOI information helps you to assess this.

Just because they undertook an inspection does not mean that the inspection was done in an appropriate manner. For example, if the inspection was done by one bloke driving at 50mph, this is not reasonable.

Also ... it is possible that the pothole you hit had been reported previously, but they hadn't repaired it. Again, this is considered generally to be unacceptable and the FOI records will help you to assess this.