Beat the Council

by adiohead

01 Jun 2009

Hello,
Firstly, I just want to say a big thanks to this site! I had amazing advice from Moh and it's because of him that I managed to beat the Council.

A pothole had damaged both my wheel and tyre so I wrote to the Council involved and included pictures. It was rejected under section 58 of the Highways Act.

To proceed I needed to build a case and prove they were neglecting the road.

I requested details of inspections and complaints of the road under The Freedom of Information Act. This revealed that they were not doing enough inspections annually according to the National Guidelines! The road is a Class C (3b) and inspected 4 times a year, it should have been 12 times. Not only did I use the National Guidelines to prove this, I used other Council's inspection frequencies as evidence.

Heavy Goods Vehicles use the road in question all year round as there is a Quarry and it was also undergoing road and building work at the time. The Council knew this but still didn't increase the frequency of inspections, let alone meet the National Guidelines.

After a year of writing many letters they still did not back down! I'd had enough and filed for Court proceedings using MoneyClaim online. This website is great but the box didn't give me enough room to fill in everything I wanted to say, luckily this worked to my advantage.

They defended the case by blaming me of liability, saying that I should of avoided the pothole. They also had the cheek to accuse me of speeding without any evidence. I'm not sure what their solicitor was doing but he should of known better than to of made a libel statement!

They also insinuated that I was deceiving the Council because it took me two weeks to change my wheel. My wheel had to be specially ordered and this was the waiting time.

I was filling out form to reply to their defence and to say whether I'd accept mediation when I got a pleasant phone call from the Council deciding to settle my claim in full out of Court. After a year of battling, I had won!

In a way, I wish it had gone to Court as it would have been a good experience and I'd of like to have demolished their defence in person.

What I hadn't been able to fill out on the initial form was that it was pouring with rain on the night it happened. Conditions made it impossible to even get close to the speed limit and the pothole was next to a drain that was blocked and full of water. There was no way I'd of been able to avoid it as, to me, it just looked like a puddle in the road.

You just need to prove neglect. If you have a case, don't give up!