Potholes story (Wandsworth admits liability)

by RBuck

28 Jul 2010

(Published on Behalf of a user)

In February, with the winter weather at its worst, I drove straight into a pothole in the dark, whose depth I could not gauge. It turned out to be a very deep hole and the steering started juddering thereafter. The pothole was in Furzedown Road in the borough of Wandsworth. By chance the car was going in for a service on the Monday morning (this happened on Saturday evening) and the garage told me that I had bent the rim out of shape and that the tyre neded replacing.

Using the Potholes website and its specimen letter under FoI, I fired off a letter to Wandsworth Council. The reply I received made for interesting reading. The classification of Furzedown Road is 3b and the UK Roads Liaison Group in its document "Well Maintained Highways - Code of Practice for Highway Maintenance Management" recommends that such a road be inspected monthly, but advises that the frequency should change if weather conditions dictate. Wandsworth's inspection schedule, provided under the FoI request, showed that the road was being inspected every three months and that frequency had not been increased despite the worst winter weather for 30 years.

I also reported the existence of the potholes (in fact a series of six separate holes) to Wandsworth as soon as I found out who the local authority was. When I next went to the site two weeks after the incident, these potholes had already been filled in, but other equally bad ones further down the same road had not.

I contended that the defence under s.58 of the Highways Act 1980 was not available to the council as they had demonstrably not been inspecting the road as frequently as good practice dictated. They passed the matter on to their insurers who, after a bit of unnecessary delay and an attempt to pay me off for the tyre but not the wheel, then sent me a cheque for £729.

I had not realised the significance of asking for the road classification under Potholes' standard FoI letter but I now realise this was a crucial element in my success. Match up the road classification to the recommended frequency of inspection as per "Well Maintained Highways" and then compare to the council's own inspection schedule to see if there is a discrepancy. If there is, the council cannot use the s.58 defence (or at least Wandsworth didn't try to).