£1800 claim refused within 3 working days!

by dempy1

26 Feb 2010

When I travelling to work early on the 5th of February, I struck a Pothole! It was a single track road and the pothole was covered in water so you couldnt see it.

You can see from the photo's that this was more than a pothole, when I went back to take the photo's the water leval had gone down and and I was amazed at what I found.

This hole (or crater) was 55 inches in length, 35 inches from the side of the road to the outside of the hole and a massive 5-7 inches deep! The face of the hole that caused the damage was 5 inches.

I had to get on the phone and get my Dad to bring me a second spare wheel because it had broken the front and back .

Once I had the car going, I drove straight to the local Council Office to report the dangerous hole and ask how I could about claiming. The lady I spoke to was very sympathetic and said she would send a claim form in the post and she did.

i filled the form in, got to estimates for the damage and sent it on to the council on Thursday 18th February, The responding letter I recieved was posted out on the same day my claim would of been recieved (the 19th) and it was SECTION 58!

I was very upset by this, I thought that my claim has not even been looked at and I have just been fobbed off! that is when I found this site.

So i sent a FOI request to my council and I got this response:

Dorset County Council

26 February 2010
Dear Mr Caines
I am writing further to your email below.

I understand from the Insurance & Risk Management Team that you have
submitted a claim in respect of your incident. The Freedom of Information
Act does not replace other access regimes. Now that you have submitted a
claim, access to each party's relevant documents (discovery) will be
governed by the Civil Procedure Rules (part 31.22). As such, the
information you have requested under FOI will be available under other
(secondary) legislation made on a statutory basis. Your request under FOI
must therefore be refused under section 44 (prohibitions on disclosure) of
the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This exemption is 'absolute' and is
not subject to the public interest test.

If you are not completely satisfied with my response, please contact me
again, or write to the complaints officer at: Dorset County Council, County
Hall, Colliton Park, Dorchester, Dorset DT1 1XJ. Or you can follow the
complaints procedure that can be found on our website www.dorsetforyou.com
at http://212.104.140.176/index.jsp?article... If your appeal is
not resolved to your satisfaction, you have the right to apply to the
Information Commissioner for a decision.

Yours sincerely

Freedom of Information Team
Dorset County Council


What do I do know? It seems they are keen to close every door and obviously information is not free if they dont want you to see it!