I kindly request the following information and please provide the data for each of these points over the last three years (June 2021 -May 2022, June 2022 – May 2023, June 2023 -May 2024), broken down by year.
1. The number of motorists who have lodged a complaint about a pothole and requested compensation.
Compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time. Claims for compensation are not logged as complaints. In order to check if a claim came in attached to a complaint about a pothole, we would need to check all complaints regarding potholes in the period indicated. We estimate we would need to check 1000 complaints and this would take 5 minutes for each complaint which is 83 hours and therefore over the 18 hours of officer time.
Under the Act, there is a duty to provide advice and assistance as to how a request can be refined to fit within the appropriate limit. Unfortunately, due to the way the data is held, this is not possible for this request.
2. The number of people who have received a pay-out for pothole compensation.
3. The total amount paid by the council for pothole compensation.
For question 2 and 3, the information below relates to claims (as opposed to complaints):
1st June 2021 to 31st May 2022 – 765 claims, 176 accepted, £38,819 paid
1st June 2022 to 31st May 2023 – 1,591 claims, 238 accepted, £51,799 paid
1st June 2023 to 31st May 2024 – 1,750 claims, 275 accepted, £48,745 paid