These Councils Rejected 99 Percent of Drivers’ Pothole Compensation Claims Last Year

• Some councils rejected 99 percent of pothole compensation claims in 2024, according to Freedom of Information data reported by the RAC.
• Claims to 177 councils rose 91 percent in three years, from 27,731 in 2021 to 53,015 in 2024, but only a quarter of authorities paid out.
• Drivers whose claims are refused are typically left to cover an average repair bill themselves, with successful claims paying out just £390 on average.

Your pothole claim is more likely to be refused than paid

Hit a pothole hard enough to damage a wheel, tyre or suspension component and the natural next step is to ask the council responsible for the road to cover the repair bill. Freedom of Information requests sent to 177 UK local authorities, reported by the RAC, show that is a longer shot than most drivers realise. Councils including Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Medway, Carmarthenshire and Telford rejected 99 percent of the compensation claims they received in 2024.

Across the sample, only around a quarter of councils, 26 percent, actually settled and paid compensation that year. Roughly 40,000 claims were turned down in 2024 alone.

Claims have nearly doubled while payouts stayed rare

The number of drivers even bothering to submit a claim has surged as road conditions have worsened. Across the 177 councils, claims rose 91 percent in three years, from 27,731 in 2021 to 53,015 in 2024. Derbyshire County Council saw the sharpest rise of any authority, from 224 claims in 2021 to 3,307 in 2024, an increase of 3,083. Glasgow City Council’s claims more than doubled, from 1,140 to 2,794, while Oxfordshire County Council’s climbed from 488 to 1,941.

Yet the money actually paid out has not kept pace with the scale of the problem. Councils handed over an estimated £3,564,824 in compensation across the whole of 2024, at an average of £390 per successful claim. Bridgend was the only council in the data to pay out on 100 percent of the claims it received, though its total volume, 52 claims, was far smaller than the councils fielding thousands of requests.

The legal defence that lets councils say no

Most rejections rest on Section 58 of the Highways Act 1980. It allows a council to avoid paying compensation if it can show it had a reasonable system of road inspection and maintenance in place, and that it did not know, and could not reasonably have known, about the specific pothole that caused the damage. In practice, that means a council only has to produce inspection records showing the road was checked on schedule and the defect had not yet been logged.

Some councils have told researchers that effectively every claim they refuse is turned down on exactly this basis, that they simply did not know the pothole existed before the driver hit it. It is a defence that becomes easier to rely on the longer a council goes without repairing its network, as a backlog of unlogged defects works in the authority’s favour at claim time rather than against it.

What evidence actually gets a claim paid

Drivers who succeed tend to do the same handful of things immediately after the damage happens. Photograph the pothole from several angles with something for scale, such as a shoe or a coin, before the council can repair it and erase the evidence. Note the exact location, ideally with a what3words reference or GPS coordinates, along with the date and time. Keep the repair invoice and, where possible, a garage report describing the damage and confirming it is consistent with pothole impact rather than wear and tear.

Before submitting a claim, use the council’s own website or a Freedom of Information request to check whether the pothole had already been reported by someone else. A prior report proves the council knew about the defect and undermines a Section 58 defence built on ignorance. Fix My Street and individual council reporting portals both create a dated record that can be cited later.

If a claim is refused, ask the council in writing for its road inspection records for that stretch covering the months before the incident. Under the Freedom of Information Act, councils generally have to provide this within 20 working days. Gaps or missed inspections in that paperwork are the strongest grounds for challenging a rejection, either through the council’s internal appeals process or, for claims under £10,000, the small claims track of the county court.

Why the backlog keeps growing

The RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, said the rise in claims reflects years of underinvestment in local roads, though he pointed to a recent £1.6 billion government funding boost for highway maintenance as a reason authorities might start to close the gap. Until that money translates into fewer defects, the safest assumption for drivers is that a pothole claim is a fight worth having, but rarely a quick win.

How the situation varies across the country

The RAC’s figures make clear that a driver’s odds of a successful claim depend heavily on which side of a council boundary their process happens to end on. A pothole on a road maintained by an authority with a poor inspection record and a habit of refusing nearly everything leaves a driver with little recourse beyond the small claims court. The same damage on a road maintained by a council that settles a higher proportion of claims can be resolved with a simple written request and an invoice.

That inconsistency is part of why campaigners have pushed for a national, standardised inspection and reporting system rather than leaving each of England’s more than 150 highway authorities to set its own thresholds for what counts as a defect worth logging. Until that happens, the practical advice for drivers is the same regardless of postcode: report every pothole you spot, whether or not it damages your car, as each report becomes part of the paper trail that can undermine a future Section 58 defence for someone else’s claim.

Insurers can also play a role. Fully covered policies typically cover pothole damage to wheels, tyres and suspension components, though claiming through insurance rather than the council will usually affect a driver’s no claims bonus. Weighing the average £390 council payout against the cost of losing a no claims discount is worth doing before deciding which route to pursue for a lower-value repair.

What the funding boost is meant to fix

The £1.6 billion in highway maintenance funding referenced by the RAC is spread across England’s local authorities rather than ring-fenced for pothole repair specifically, meaning individual councils choose how much of it goes toward reactive patching versus longer-term resurfacing. Roads that receive a full resurface rather than a patch typically go five to ten years before defects reappear, while a patched pothole can crack again within a single winter if water gets underneath the repair.

That distinction counts for claims too, as a road with a recent full resurfacing history is far harder for a driver to win a claim against, simply as there are fewer defects for a council to have missed. A council relying heavily on patch repairs, by contrast, generates more of the repeat defects that eventually catch out drivers between inspection cycles.

Cyclists and motorcyclists face a version of the same problem with fewer options for redress, as a bent wheel or a fall caused by a pothole often leaves no vehicle damage invoice to submit, only a personal injury claim that takes far longer to resolve than a simple repair bill.

Drivers who lease their vehicle rather than own it outright should check the terms of the leasing agreement before submitting any pothole claim directly to a council, as some agreements require the finance company to be named alongside the driver on correspondence relating to vehicle damage.

Sources:

• Local Government Lawyer: Councils see massive rise pothole claims
• RAC Drive: Council pothole compensation claims data
• BBC: Analysis of council pothole claims data