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Any successful pothole damage claims? - Keith Thomas (13th Apr 2021  18:34:59) Last September I was driving back from Wey Hill along Liphook Road towards Liphook and hit a large pothole causing £1500 of damage to my 3 month old car. I submitted a claim to West Sussex County Council at that time and have been chasing them ever since for an response. Today (nearly 7 months later) my claim has been rejected with them denying negligence. Does anybody have a pothole claim success story, even better with WSCC and ideally with the same pothole? And yes, I know the poor taxpayer will be picking up the bill but due process is there for the Council to provide a duty of care to keep our roads safe. The only evasive action I could take at the last minute was to have a head-on crash with a massive builder’s lorry.

Re: Any successful pothole damage claims? - er (13th Apr 2021  19:35:56) You would need to specify the actual pothole as that road like many others is often littered with them! Assuming you've followed all the steps on money saving expert, got photos and measurements, etc, then if they won't pay you should do a FOI request re maintenance and to see if it had been reported, then appeal, if that fails I'm afraid it's probably a small claims court as it's a civil matter. Let's face it councils don't have enough money, many are nearly bankrupt and we don't want to pay higher council tax so I imagine things will only get worse and councils will battle to avoid paying out, personally I move round them if it's safe, really annoys me if something's coming and I have to take the hit, or if it's a new one takes me by suprise, never made a claim but it doesn't do the tracking or my back any good, I guess. Also the mania for hard suspension and low profile tyres, hard, unforgiving alloy wheels doesn't help, the old cars had steel wheels and softer shocks, more practical tyres, they may not have cornered so well at high speed, but dealt with the roads much better, I guess it's just a curse of modern life!

Re: Any successful pothole damage claims? - B (13th Apr 2021  20:06:56) What ever you do do NOT accept their rejection and fight it. Their default response is to say no hoping people don’t take it any further. I’ve had to take Surrey & East Hants to a small claims and they settled before the court date.

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