Pothole claims

Hitting a pothole normally causes damage to a car's tyres, wheels or axles, and you'll often know immediately that something's wrong.

To claim for the damage, you'll have to prove the pothole caused it – that the repairs you're having to shell out for were specifically caused by your impact with the pothole. Ask your mechanic to put this in writing for you.

If your vehicle already had a problem, and the pothole made it worse, you can still claim but you won't get the full repair costs back.

As soon as you've hit a pothole, make sure you warn other drivers. Whether or not you intend to claim, calling it in will help to keep the roads safe (and if you do intend to make a claim further down the line, it's important to be able to show you did your civic duty).

Even if you don't think you'll qualify for compensation after hitting a pothole, ALWAYS report it. We need to put pressure on the authorities to fix these problems. That's not just about making it costly when they don't fix them, it's making sure they know about problems on their roads.

Different authorities are responsible for maintaining certain types of road, so you'll need to check who to contact. The table below shows who's in charge of what. To find out what road you're on, first check the road name on a map or sat-nav. If you're still stuck, contact National Highways for help.

When you call up the relevant company, ask if claim forms can be sent to you, or if you can download them online.

The UK's highway authorities and agencies are legally obliged to maintain roads to a safe standard. That includes fixing potholes.

There's no explicit sentence in law which covers claiming for potholes, but there are laws which force authorities to keep the roads safe – and that's what you'll be claiming the authorities have failed to do.

• In England and Wales, the relevant legislation can be found in Parts 42-58 of the Highways Act 1980.

• In Scotland, it's Part 1 of the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984.

• In Northern Ireland, it's Article 8 of the Roads (Northern Ireland) Order 1993.

For most pothole claims, there's a step-by-step procedure you can follow. But if your claim's unsuccessful, the last resort is to go to the small claims court – except in Northern Ireland, where there is an ombudsman.

Although this guide is about claiming for pothole damage from the authority responsible, you also need to consider claiming on your car insurance. And even if you don't claim on your insurance (or you only have third-party cover), you'll need to decide whether to notify your insurer.

• Should I claim on my insurance?

  There's no doubt that claiming on your car insurance is an easier process than claiming compensation from those responsible for maintaining the road (and doesn't rely on you claiming from the taxpayer, either). But you need to factor in the cost of the damage, your excess and the effect on any no-claims bonus you have.

  Bear in mind you can't claim twice – if you claim on your car insurance, there's no point claiming compensation as well. If you did, then according to a legal technicality, anything you got from the responsible authority would be paid to your insurer.

• Should I notify my insurer otherwise?

  Insurers tell us drivers should notify them of pothole damage immediately, regardless of whether they intend to claim. You'll then usually have around five or six months before you have to file an insurance claim, which gives you time to see if a claim to the responsible authority will work first.

  Be aware if you do notify your insurer, there might be a risk in some cases of your premium being affected for the following year, even if you don't actually claim. This is impossible to quantify (plus big insurers have told us claiming WOULDN'T affect next year's premium), but it's something you should consider.

Yep, we're stating the obvious here, but if the pothole's on a motorway or major carriageway anywhere in the UK, you can't stop to take pictures. Not only is it unsafe, it's also a criminal offence to walk unauthorised along a motorway. You also need to be careful about stopping in a dangerous place and getting out of your vehicle.

Your best bet in this case is looking for a vantage point, such as a nearby bridge, that allows you to safely take pictures of the signs and general location.

It depends – it can be a lengthy process. We've heard of some claims being approved in as little as four weeks, but others taking seven or eight months.

Be patient and tough it out, because sometimes claimers will hear nothing for months, then suddenly get a letter confirming compensation. You'll likely need perseverance and patience.

We'd love to hear your triumphs via our Pothole claims MSE Forum thread, by using the handle @MoneySavingExp on X, or by emailing us using successes@moneysavingexpert.com.

Let's not beat around the bush – submitting a claim for pothole damage can be a fair bit of work, and success is far from guaranteed. Even experts in the field admit it can be a challenging process.

That said, it is possible to recoup the cost of the damage, and we hope that as more people try this, it'll become easier. In many of the cases we've seen, claimants have got the full cost of repairs, with some going all the way to court. Others have decided, after a lengthy process, to accept a settlement for part of their costs.

The bottom line? You have a decent shot of getting your damage paid for, but it may take some time and there are no guarantees.

If you hit a pothole and damage your car, it's easiest to claim as soon as you can. However, officially the limit for retrospective claims is six years (five in Scotland) – because that's how far back you can go when filing for damages in the small claims court.

If you hit a pothole years ago and didn't gather any evidence, it's unlikely you'll be able to claim for damage now. If you did collect evidence at the time but didn't file a claim – or did file a claim and were rejected – you may still be able to make a full claim using a Freedom of Information request as we explain below.

However, there's no guarantee you'll be successful – and a full claim takes a lot longer and involves more paperwork.

Sometimes drivers may hit a pothole on a road controlled by a business – for example, where a supermarket is responsible for the road or car park leading to its entrance.

Here, the same legal principle applies – the private company in question has a legal duty to keep the road safe. The rules are set out in the Occupiers Liability Act 1984 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, it's the Occupiers' Liability (Scotland) Act 1960.

Confusingly, individual councils in England, Scotland and Wales can make up their own road maintenance policies, although they're often based around a national code of practice. So if you're claiming from a council you'll need to go through the policy they send you carefully. In particular, check:

• How it defines road defects (for instance, potholes).

• How quickly these defects should be repaired (for example, 24 hours or 28 days).

• How often inspections should be carried out.

• Once they've emerged, how quickly these defects should be identified.

• How inspections should be undertaken (for example, by a slow-moving vehicle with a camera).

There is also a separate document called the 'Well-managed highway infrastructure' code of practice which sets out national standards. However, even if the council followed its own rules, there's a chance its rules weren't adequate – so you might still be able to argue negligence.

The National Highways policy comes from two documents: the Network Management Manual (link opens PDF) and the Routine and Winter Service Code (link opens PDF). Yes, they sound like a cure for insomnia – but know the right sections and they'll give you extra ammunition.

• Safety inspections

  • What the winter code says. Potholes should be identified and verified within 24 hours on motorways with heavy traffic, or seven days on less busy carriageways (see flow diagram 2.1 on page 24). The Network Management Manual tells National Highways how to do safety inspections.

  • What the manual says. Part 3 (part 3.1.2.5 Safety Inspections) says regular visual inspections should be "carried out by two trained personnel operating together from a slow moving vehicle".

    It adds: "In particular circumstances (eg, in town centres, principal shopping areas, subways, footbridges and at complex road junctions) inspection personnel may need to proceed on foot either to confirm suspected faults or to complete the inspection."

    And that: "Safety inspections also cover highway structures and tunnels and must identify obvious deficiencies which represent, or might lead to, a danger to the public and therefore require immediate or urgent attention."

  • What this means. The vehicle should be travelling at less than 40mph during the inspection. If the road that damaged your vehicle was at a complex junction, inspectors may need to have made checks on foot. Plus if the pothole that damaged your vehicle created serious risk, it should have been repaired within 24 hours of identification.

    If two people are unavailable to do the inspection, then one person and a data collection device should be used.

    If you find out from your FOI request that inspections were done at more than 40mph, or that there was just one driver and data collection devices weren't used to replace a second person, this will help your claim.

• Pothole repairs

  • What the winter code says. The code refers to potholes as 'category 1 defects' (see part 2.1.1 on page 28) and sets out various requirements.

  • What it means. Potholes should be made safe within 24 hours of being identified or reported if, as the code says, there's an "immediate or imminent risk of ... damage to a third party's property or equipment". Permanent repairs should then happen, where needed, within 28 days.

    This also applies to potholes found on adjacent footways and cycle tracks the agency's responsible for – so cyclists may be able to claim too if affected. Whatever category National Highways gives a road, the repair timeframe above applies.

Traffic Wales is the Government agency responsible for maintaining motorways and major trunk roads in Wales. This is the organisation you report the pothole to, though your claim will be passed to the Welsh Government's claim investigation unit.

The road maintenance policy Traffic Wales uses is the Trunk Road Maintenance Manual. This isn't available online, so has to be requested, but you should receive Part 2: Routine Maintenance of Highways in the response to your FOI request. We've picked out the parts below that could support your claim below.

• Safety inspections

  • What the maintenance manual says (p12, sec 1.1.4.1). "Safety inspections are designed to identify those defects which are likely to create a danger to the public and therefore require immediate or urgent attention... Additional safety inspections may be required in response to reports or complaints from the police, other organisations and the public."

  • What this means. Safety inspections on the road that damaged your car should have identified a pothole. If it wasn't spotted before you hit it, the authority needs a good reason. It might be, for instance, that inspections were done properly and at the required frequency, but the pothole emerged after the last inspection and wasn't reported by a third party.

  The manual goes on to dictate how often certain types of road should be inspected.

  • What the manual says. Inspection category A and B roads "shall receive a safety inspection at intervals of seven days". Inspection category C roads "shall receive a safety inspection at intervals of 28 days".

  • What this means. In Wales, motorways including the M4, M48 and A48 (M) are all in category A, so should be inspected once a week. Most major roads fit into category A and B, though the manual does not provide a list of category C roads. More roads and categories are listed on page 9 of Part 2: Routine Maintenance of Highways.

  The manual also details how inspections should be carried out.

  • What the manual says. "Inspections shall normally be mobile inspections carried out from slow moving vehicles, with the occasional need to proceed on foot, at frequencies which reflect the importance of a particular road."

  • What this means. Inspections should be carried out in a vehicle travelling slower than 40mph. So if you find that they were carried out at 40mph+, or needed to be done on foot and weren't, this will help your claim.

• Safety patrols

  In addition to safety inspections, in Wales extra 'safety patrols' should be carried out.

  • What the manual says (p12, 2.1.4). "Safety patrols shall be undertaken on inspection category A roads (including weekends and bank holidays) between the weekly safety inspections."

  • What this means. These patrols are slightly more detailed than safety inspections. If they weren't done on the road that damaged your vehicle, or they were and the pothole wasn't logged and repaired, it's a big boost to your claim.

• Pothole repairs

  Another critical thing Traffic Wales has to do is fix defects (potholes) properly and quickly. The manual categorises potholes as 'category 1' defects, as they present an immediate hazard to drivers.
  

  • What the manual says (p10, sec 1.1.3.3). Category 1 defects are: "Those which require prompt attention because they represent an immediate or imminent hazard."

    It also contains this section on Category 1 permanent repairs: "Where possible the Permanent Repair should be made when the defect is identified or verified. If this is not possible, it should be effected as soon as possible thereafter within the maximum time available."
    

  • What this means. Essentially, this shows that potholes should be made safe within a day, then fixed permanently within 28 days. So you'll need to check if Traffic Wales obeyed this rule.

Amey (north-east and south-west Scotland) and Bear Scotland (north-west and south-east Scotland) are road maintenance agencies contracted by Transport Scotland – the Government body that controls the country's motorways. The agencies are responsible for maintaining big trunk roads, carriageways and motorways.

Transport Scotland tells us the contracts are based on the same principles, but there are small differences based on the geographical areas covered.

You can see the contracts for each region on Transport Scotland's website. Again, they sound like a cure for insomnia, but the right sections will give you extra ammo and you don't have to read them start to finish.

The DfI (formerly the Department for Regional Development) has a division called DfI Roads that maintains over 15,500 miles of public roads in Northern Ireland. Most of the motorways are managed by two DBFO (Design, Build, Finance, Operate) companies – Amey Roads NI and Highway Management City.

DfI Roads is bound by a set of rules that dictate how it should inspect roads and how quickly it should fix potholes. These are included in a wider document called Road Maintenance Standards.

• Safety inspections

DfI Roads has to inspect certain types of road at specific frequencies. For example, motorways have to be inspected daily from Monday to Saturday.

It's a little different for other types of road. The table show how often these other types should be inspected:

• Pothole repairs
  
  The Road Maintenance Standards for Safety also sets out how quickly potholes should be fixed after they've been identified, depending on how deep they are. The times apply from the point when DfI Roads have identified the pothole, or it's been reported by the public and logged on its system.

What about motorways?

In Northern Ireland, the motorways are managed slightly differently. Two DBFO companies – Amey Roads NI and Highway Management City – look after the bulk of them. Here's what a spokesperson told us:

For those parts of the motorway network still maintained by the DfI (M2 Ballymena Bypass and M12), the same response times apply as per other high-traffic roads.

Safety inspections

• What the code says (p40, sec A.5.7.1). "Safety inspections are designed to identify all defects likely to create danger or serious inconvenience to users of the network or the wider community.

  "Such defects should include those that are considered to require urgent attention as well as those where the locations and sizes are such that longer periods of response would be acceptable."
  

  It adds on p94, sec B.5.2.1 that councils "should determine the most appropriate way to undertake inspections" including "inspections from a slow moving vehicle or, in busy urban areas... walking should be used".

• What this means. The 'defects' referred to are potholes. Some potholes which create a serious risk need urgent attention. If the pothole that damaged your vehicle fits this description, and wasn't fixed within a timeframe that could reasonably be considered urgent, your claim will have a good chance.
  

  Where the code says slow-moving vehicle, this tends to mean less than 40mph. So if the inspection on the road in question exceeded this, or if it should've been done on foot and wasn't, this'll be another boon for your claim.

Frequency of safety inspections

The predecessor to the Well-managed Highway Infrastructure Code of Practice – the Well-maintained Highways Code of Practice – laid out how frequently local authorities should inspect different types of road. Annoyingly, the current code lets them off the hook in that regard.

Yet it does give criteria by which authorities should determine how frequently they inspect roads and how they should respond to the identification of a pothole:

• What the code says (p41, sec A.5.7). "The [safety inspection] regime should be developed based on a risk assessment and provide a practical and reasonable approach to the risks and potential consequences identified.
  
  "Frequencies for safety inspections of individual network sections or individual assets should be based upon consideration of" several factors, including type, consequence of failure, incident and inspection history, and the approach of adjoining authorities.
  
  What this means

• P42, sec A.5.8.1. "All defects [potholes] observed during safety inspections that provide a risk to users should be recorded and the level of response determined on the basis of risk assessment."
  

• P93, sec B.4.15.3. "Authorities should have an effective public communications process that provides clarity and transparency in their policy and approach to repairing potholes. This should include a published policy and details of... the prevention, identification, reporting, tracking and repair of potholes."
  

• P93, sec B.4.15.4. "To provide clarity, authorities should adopt dimensional definitions for potholes based on best practice as part of their maintenance policy."

Local authorities should also consider the most vulnerable road users, and traffic type and intensity, when saying how they will carry out safety inspections, and take access requirements (for example, if a road provides access to a school or hospital) into account when determining how they will record and repair potholes.

Identifying potholes

• What the code says (p42, sec A.5.8). "The degree of risk from a pothole depends upon not merely its depth but also its surface area and location."
  
  The code categorises the degree of risk like this:
  

  - "Defects which are considered to require urgent attention should be corrected or made safe at the time of the inspection, if reasonably practicable."
  

  - "Defects that do not represent an immediate or imminent hazard or risk of short term structural deterioration may have safety implications, although of far less significance than those which are considered to require urgent attention."

  It adds that making safe those requiring urgent attention "may constitute displaying warning notices, coning off or fencing of" and that, if temporary repairs were made, permanent repairs "should be carried out within a reasonable period".

• What this means. If you have evidence that shows the pothole you hit required urgent attention, and wasn't repaired or made safe when it was identified, this'll bolster your claim.

  Most potholes will be classed as defects requiring urgent attention, but if the pothole you hit is classed as not having represented an immediate or imminent hazard, the authority in question will have its own response times for fixing these. Your FOI response should tell you what this is.

If you find that the council's road maintenance policy falls short of national standards, you can use this as a powerful line of argument when making your claim.

If your claim is in Northern Ireland, you CAN pursue it further with the Department for Infrastructure (DfI).

If you still believe there are discrepancies between what the DfI should have done and what it did in terms of maintaining the road you hit a pothole on, you can write back, explain these discrepancies and state that you're making an official complaint.

If you're unsatisfied about the general way your claim was handled, you can also complain to the DfI Roads Claims Unit. This is more about delays and communication though, rather than the decision itself.

If you exhaust the complaints process and there's still no satisfactory resolution, then unlike in the rest of the UK, there is somewhere else you can turn to.

You can take your case further by contacting the free Northern Ireland Public Services Ombudsman (NIPSO). It will provide you with an independent adjudication – if this goes against you, then unfortunately it's highly likely any court action will be unsuccessful.