Claim rejected

10th June 2010

I had a claim against Connectplus rejected from a incident in January, it has taken 3 months to get the response back (which seems too long for me).

The incident was that i hot a pothole in the fast lane of the M25. The wheel got hit and dneted which lead to the air seal breaking. I was then faced driving the car at 70mph with a flat wheel. i was lucky to get the car back to the hard shoulder. In the end £500 of damage has been made. 2 Wheels (front and rear wheel) and a tyre was replaced.

What is thebest way to appeal against connectplus, they are stating the pothole was a catagory 2. I would dispute this, as there are concrete scores on the alloy itself, which must have meant the wheel actaully hit the road desk which is more than 40mm depth (which is a catagory 1).

Any advice, I am looking a small claims court after my appeal.

Replies (4)

craigio     posted : 11/06/10 at 1:25 pm

Yes, 11tubs, which from looking at one tub is quite alot of material.

Sorry if its been misleading to be honest the letter i got back was confusing to read and was using acroymns to confuse things further. I am appealing because it doesnt answer any questions but looking at the data supplied the time line works:

10am pothole reportted (catagory 1)
12:30 pothole repairs temp repair.
13:30 Inspection reports pothole (Catagory 1)
4-5pm I hit the alleged pothole

Nearly one month later the tempory repairs held good and was downgraded to Catagory 2.

Information is incomplete sent to me, So it want to address that also. Also i did call the highways agency 20 minutes after the incident to report. I need to see if my phone call was logged in the incident logs and what number that was.

There is other information, but the above information is appearing to be showing that repairs was done but was still reporting a pothole after the repairs.

I have reported this to my local MP to ask for support also.

Potholes.co.uk Expert     posted : 11/06/10 at 12:08 pm

11 tubs of instamac - really? That's a lot!

There's 25kg in each tub, so thats about 275kg of material used to repair the pothole. I tonne of any asphalt material is about 2.4 metres cubed.

See where I'm going with this? If you know or could estimate the length and width of the repair, you could have a reasonable 'stab' at the depth of the pothole from the amount of material used.

35mm could still damage a tyre, but legal precedent has said that this depth is acceptable and that the public can not expect roads to be perfect. Download highway liability claims from www.roadscodes.org for more info on this.

Unless you can PROVE that the highway authority have been negligent in some way, the Highways Act 1980 says that no-one is responsible.

craigio     posted : 11/06/10 at 10:42 am

Sorry its its not very clear. As the pothole was on the motorway its not very easy to establish what the material is. From the split second I went over the pothole the hole appeared to be white in colour which i assume is concrete, but the surface is black in colour which i assume is asphalt.


I think the problem here is knowing how deep the pothole was, from the records that connect plus has given me, there appears to be no measurement made, only to say that 11 tubs of instamac was used to patch the road up.

If we assume the hole was 35mm, would this still be considered to be able to cause damage to the wheel?
As my tyre deflated from the impact, does this have any baring on the impact as well?

From my perpective, the road has damaged both wheels of my car. But who is resposible here?

More than happy to supply further information if you wish to help, would prefer to at least email this information.

Potholes.co.uk Expert     posted : 11/06/10 at 9:22 am

I'm trying to get this straight in my head! .... was the running surface asphalt? and below the asphalt was concrete? If so, there is every chance that the pothole was less than 40 mm deep;

1. It is very rare to get potholes in concrete roads
2. The most popular modern day surfacing on top of concrete is thin wearing course, which is often laid 30-35 mm thick. Assuming this material had plucked out, and the concrete was in place, the pothole could be no deeper than the thickness of the material.

I could reply better with some more info