New data reveals amount paid for compensation from pothole damage in Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire Country Council has paid out nearly £500.000 to motorists for damage caused by potholes in the past three years.
The figure puts the authority third in a league table of the highest payouts nationally, behind East Sussex County Council at £549,819 and Wiltshire Council at £474.25.
That is according to research conducted by Select Car Leasing, which has shone a light on the country’s decaying roads.
But while Cambridgeshire awarded £471,000 to pothole-hit motorists in three years from June 2021 to May this year, from June 2023 to May 2024 it only paid out £117,000.
A significant drop from the £274,000 paid out to motorists in the previous year.
Around a quarter of compensation claimants in Cambridgeshire were successful, with 1,031 out of more than 4,000 securing a payout.
The county is set to receive an additional £4.6 million to improve roads as part of the reallocated funding from the HS2 project.
Graham Conway, managing director at Select Car Leasing, said the firm’s findings painted a bleak picture.
He added: “Earlier this summer, the new Labour government pledged to fund councils to repair up to a million potholes a year in England, adding £320 million to council coffers over five years – in addition to the £8.3bn already promised by the Conservatives.
“The fact that we’ve reached a point where so much funding needs to be found speaks volumes about how staggeringly poor our roads have become.
“Our research shows that enormous amounts of money have been paid out by already-beleaguered councils in order to compensate motorists for damage to their vehicles caused by potholes. That’s money that could be used for general road maintenance.
“And those vast sums are just the tip of the iceberg, with countless motorists either failing in their attempts to claim compensation or who simply choose not to claim in the first place.”
Labour’s own pothole analysis indicates that the average repair charge for pothole damage is around £250.
Data was collected by Select Car Leasing, one of the UK’s largest independent specialists for car and van leasing, from an Freedom of Information request to county councils in the UK. The firm requested the details on pothole compensation in each council from June 2021 to May 2024.
