FOI Request - Pothole Claims
Request 101002407834
For each financial year between 2015-16 and 2018/19, please could you answer the following questions:
1. How many claims has your council:
1a. Received for compensation due to damage caused to vehicles by potholes?
1b. Accepted and subsequently, made payments to the claimant?
2. What was the total compensation amount paid by the council to claimants?
3. How much money did the council:
3a. Spend on road maintenance (please provide both capital and revenue spend)?
3b. Allocate for your road maintenance budget?
4.How many potholes were:
4a. Reported to the council?
4b. Repaired by the council?
NB - Please could all the above information be broken down by financial year and where the data allows, by council area.
Please return the information in an Excel (.xls) format rather than a PDF document.
Response 10-03-2020
1. and 2. Due to the low numbers involved, a breakdown of the number of claims each year could lead to the identification of individuals. this information is therefore exempt under section 38(1)(b) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, personal information.
Can advise that for period there were 5 vehicles
010415 - 310316 21 vehicle damage £0.00 pd
010416 - 310317 17 vehicle damage £0.00 pd
010417 - 310318 24 vehicle damage £936.27 pd
010418 - 310319 21 vehicle damage £225.24 pd
3. Please note that these figures are taken from budget headings which include various road maintenance activities e.g. drainage gully cleaning, footway and verge maintenance, so may not be considered by everyone to be ‘”road repairs”.
The council spent on Road Maintenance the following:
| Financial Year | Capital Budget | Capital Expenditure | Revenue Budget | Revenue Expenditure |
| 2015-2016 2016-2017 2017-2018 2018-2019 |
£1,996,000 £2,414,000 £2,867,000 £2,712,000 |
£1,974,196.00 £2,047,558.00 £2,943,470.00 £2,620,168.00 |
£1,510,000 £1,544,000 £1,525,000 £1,278,000 |
£1,485,460.00 £1,368,848.00 £1,292,966.16 £1,386,453.00 |
4. In accordance with section 17 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 please be advised that this information is not held. The closest data we have is the number of work instructions which were categorised as ‘carriageway defects’. It is important to note that not all of these instruction will be regarding potholes, and also that some instruction may have been reporting several carriageway defects in the vicinity.
| Financial Year | Carriageway Defects Reported | Carriageway Defects Repaired |
| 2015-2016 2016-2017 2017-2018 2018-2019 |
397 403 487 465 |
4417 4239 4471 4497 |