Potholes cost council £764k

Lincolnshire County Council tops the national table when it comes to paying out the most compensation for pothole damage in recent years.

Councillors say it’s partly due to cuts in government funding and that the average claim it’s paid has gone down in recent years.

A survey by What Car? magazine says the county council has paid out £764,588 between 2018 and 2021.

The authority had 8,810 claims made against it and 4,313 (49 per cent) were successful.

The only authority in the country that paid out more was Highways England which looks after all major roads. The department paid out £865,254 from 2,707 successful claims.

The next highest local authority was Surrey County Council which shelled out £608,284 despite only 14 per cent of claims being successful.

What Car? says that more than 145,000 claims were made in England and just short of £13m was paid out with around 25.7 per cent successful leading to a national average claim of £347.

Coun Richard Davies, executive member for highways (pictured) said: “It’s not surprising that we’re second on this restricted list given that we have a huge area of 5,500 miles of road network in one of the largest counties in the country.

“As the council, we know extremely well how much the quality of the roads network means to Lincolnshire residents, and we have worked hard to make it easy for them to get in touch with us about issues they may have.

“To put these figures into context, in terms of pay-out-per-claim across the length of the network LCC is eighth out of the 20 authorities listed.

“We paid out £137.79 per claim, per mile of network as an average pay-out over the four-year period. If we compare per-claim-pay-out with road network length elsewhere in a similar way, then Stoke-on-Trent has paid out £943.71 per mile.

“Over the past four years we have actually paid out a lot less per claim, per mile of network. In 2018 the average claim pay-out was £368.85 and in 2021 that had dropped to £187.08

“What these figures do clearly underline are the increasing struggles we face on a daily basis around maintaining Lincolnshire’s roads. What we’re seeing here is the public realisation of what we’re facing now, and even more in the future precisely because our highways maintenance funds have been so drastically reduced.

“We have campaigned very strongly for a reinstatement of the £12m per year that the Government decided to take away from us in 2019/2020 and are continuing to do so now and for years to come.”

A report due to go before county councillors next week shows that public satisfaction with roads in the county has also dropped.

Some 87 per cent of residents thought spending to improve the condition of roads was a good thing.

The Public Satisfaction report also shows that levels of approval for the street lighting policy is dropping.

Many are turned off in the early hours to save energy, and the move hasn’t proved to be universally popular.

The same survey also shows support for cutting subsidies to local taxi services, rights of way and cycle routes.

Members of the Highways and Transport Scrutiny committee will discuss the public satisfaction analysis of highways and transport from January this year, on Monday.

A total of 914 surveys were completed and returned, a rate of 27.7 per cent which is higher than the national average of 23.8 per cent.

The majority of those who returned the survey were over the age of 65, with just seven from those aged between 16 and 24.