How a Pothole Claim Now Costs UK Drivers £5,380 on Average This Year

• The average payout on a successful pothole insurance claim reached £5,380 between January and May 2026, up 41 percent on the £3,814 average recorded in the first half of 2025, according to Tesco Insurance figures.
• Claims were 25 percent higher in the first five months of 2026 than in the same period the year before, with wheels the most common damage, followed by suspension, engine, underside and bumper repairs.
• Drivers do not have to rely on their own insurance and pay an excess. A free legal route lets them claim the full repair cost directly from the council that failed to fix the road.

Autumn Rain Is Turning Small Cracks Into Five Figure Repair Bills

A pothole claim that would have cost £3,814 to put right in the first half of 2025 now costs £5,380 on average, a jump of 41 percent in a single year. The figures come from Tesco Insurance and were reported in August 2026, and they land just as the season that produces the most pothole damage is getting under way. Autumn rain works its way into small cracks in the road surface, freezes overnight once temperatures drop, and expands just enough to turn a hairline fault into a hole that can bend a wheel or blow out a tyre by the time most drivers notice it.

Where the Money Is Actually Going

Wheels take the largest share of pothole damage claims, ahead of suspension, engine, underside and bumper or body panel repairs. That order is telling: a bent alloy wheel is often the cheapest item on the list. Suspension components such as a damaged control arm or a knocked out of alignment track rod end can run into hundreds of pounds on their own, and when a sharp enough impact pushes damage up into the underside or engine bay, the final bill climbs fast. Claim volumes were 25 percent higher in the first five months of 2026 than across the same period in 2025, and Tesco reported settling 12 percent more claims in January 2026 alone than it had across the whole of the second half of 2025, which points to road conditions deteriorating through the winter months rather than a one off spike.

The backdrop to those figures is a repair backlog that keeps growing. The Asphalt Industry Alliance’s ALARM survey put the cost of clearing the carriageway repair backlog across England and Wales at a record £18.62 billion, and found that almost one in six local roads now has less than five years of useful structural life left in them. Councils are not catching up with the damage. They are falling further behind it, and every mile of road left unrepaired is another stretch where a sharp edged hole can appear with no warning between one week’s drive and the next.

Why Your Own Insurance Is Not Always the Best Route

Most drivers who hit a pothole reach for their own car insurance first. It is the quickest option, and the claim usually gets settled within days. The catch is the excess, typically a few hundred pounds that comes straight out of the driver’s own pocket before the insurer pays anything, plus the risk that a claim affects a no claims discount built up over several years even when the driver did nothing wrong. On a repair bill averaging £5,380, an excess of £300 or £400 is a meaningful chunk to absorb for damage that was entirely the council’s fault for failing to maintain the road.

There is a second route that does not touch the driver’s own policy at all. Under the Highways Act 1980, a council has a legal duty to maintain the roads it is responsible for, and a driver whose car is damaged by a pothole can claim the full repair cost directly from that council rather than from their own insurer. The process costs nothing to start. A driver photographs the pothole and the damage, measures it if possible, keeps the repair invoice, and submits a claim through the council’s own insurance or claims team, usually via an online form or a written letter setting out what happened and where.

The Defence Councils Use, and How to Beat It

Councils do not simply pay out whenever asked. Most rely on what is known as a Section 58 defence, arguing that they took reasonable care to maintain the road and inspected it on a regular schedule, which if accepted removes their liability even where the pothole clearly caused the damage. Beating that defence comes down to evidence. A driver who can show the pothole had been there for some time, through other complaints logged with the council, a street view history, or simply the depth and weathering of the hole itself, puts real pressure on a council trying to claim it carried out regular, adequate inspections. Submitting a claim quickly after the damage occurs, with clear photographs showing the pothole’s size next to a coin or tape measure for scale, and a dated repair invoice from a garage, gives a council far less room to dispute what happened.

Councils vary enormously in how many of these claims they actually pay out, and drivers who are rejected on first submission should not assume that is the end of it. A rejected claim can be escalated, and taken as a last resort to the small claims court for repair bills that fall within its limit, where the burden shifts onto the council to prove its Section 58 defence rather than leaving the driver to prove the opposite. With the average payout on an insurer funded claim now at £5,380, the amount at stake for a driver pursuing a council directly is rarely small enough to write off as not worth the effort.

What to Do the Moment You Hit One

Stop somewhere safe and check the car before driving on. A damaged tyre or wheel can fail completely a few miles down the road rather than straight away. Photograph the pothole itself from several angles, including something for scale, and note the exact location, ideally with a what three words reference or a nearby landmark. A vague description is the easiest reason for a council to reject a claim later. Report the pothole to the council separately from any compensation claim too. That report becomes part of the evidence trail and can also get it fixed before it damages someone else’s car.

Get a written quote or invoice for the repair before deciding which route to use. If the bill is modest and speed is the priority, a driver’s own insurance remains the fastest fix, excess and all. If the damage runs into four figures, which at today’s average payout of £5,380 is increasingly the norm rather than the exception, claiming directly from the council avoids the excess entirely and keeps the driver’s own no claims record untouched. Either way, this is the season to check, not next spring when the damage is already done and the hole has grown.

Top locations for pothole payouts in the Tesco figures included Peterborough, Tonbridge and Northampton, with fewer claims recorded around Dorchester, Lincoln and Croydon, though the pattern shifts from one data set to the next and a quiet road one year can turn into a bad one the next, especially after a hard winter or a wet autumn like this one. The lesson for drivers anywhere in the country is the same regardless of which town tops the list this time: the road surface that looked fine on the drive to work last week can hide damage that only shows up once the weather turns, and the cost of that damage has risen faster than most household budgets have in the same period.

None of this requires a driver to become an expert in highways law before they can claim. Council websites that deal with highways claims generally publish a short form asking for the date, location, description and photographic evidence of the damage, along with the repair invoice once the work is done. Keeping that evidence organised from the moment a pothole is hit, rather than trying to reconstruct it weeks later when a claim is rejected on the first attempt, is the single biggest factor in whether a council eventually pays out or not.

Want more car content? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for the best automotive news and analysis on the internet.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to follow us on Microsoft Start.

Sources:

• Insurance Business UK: Pothole Claim Costs Climb 41% as Road Conditions Worsen
• ACE: ALARM Survey Highlights £1.8bn Rise in Pothole Repair Costs