Councils pay over £43m in claims due to potholes

Councils across the UK have spent at least £43.3 million on pothole compensation claims over the past five years.

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests by campaign group Cycling UK revealed cyclists’ injuries merited compensation 13 times higher than motorists.

The charity, which runs the pothole reporting webtool and app Fill That Hole, said the payouts demonstrated longterm failure of governments to fund local roads properly.

FOI requests were submitted to 212 highway authorities, of which 156 responded.

On average motorists received £841.26 per successful claim. Cyclists received £10,963.15.

Cycling UK said this disparity suggested cycling claims were much more likely to include personal injury rather than just property damage.

Glasgow City Council featured in the top ten of UK council with the highest payouts to cyclists during 20132017, in 10th place at £144,755.

The total paid by 12 Scottish councils in compensation to cyclists in the survey was £563,513 over the five-year timescale.

Sam Jones, Cycling UK’S senior campaigns officer, said: “It’s clear more people are being killed and seriously injured while out cycling each year due to years of persistent under investment in our rotting local road networks.

“Governments should concentrate on fixing the roads we have first before building new ones.

Mr Jones added: “Councils need to provide enough funding to adopt long-term plans for roads maintenance, rather than patching up streets only as they become dangerous.”

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “Despite continued UK government real-terms cuts to Scotland’s resource budget, we have treated local government very fairly and the £10.7 billion local government finance settlement in 2018/19 will provide a real terms boost in both revenue and capital funding.

“The local road network is the responsibility of local authorities and it is up to them to allocate resources based on local priorities. Councils will have an additional £77m to spend as they have all budgeted to increase council tax levels by the maximum allowable amount of 3 per cent.

“While local authority budget setting is the responsibility of individual authorities, the total funding they have available will increase by almost £342m in 2018/19.” Left: the pothole Mr Slorance hit for which he received no compensation

0 Andrew Slorance, a 47-year-old father of five, hit a pothole while commuting home in Edinburgh. He was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and later had two large pins put into his elbow.