Road Repairs and Maintenance

How much did the Council spend in the last financial year on repairs and maintenance of pot holes? Please confirm the financial year period?

For the financial year 2016 – 2017 the Council spent £2,731,348 against orders raised by the Council and billed by the contractor for reactive safety defect pothole repairs. This amount does not include programmed works.

How much did the Council spend in the year prior to the last financial year on repairs and maintenance of pot holes?

For the financial year 2015 – 2016 the Council spent £2,655,679 against orders raised by the Council and billed by the contractor for reactive safety defect pothole repairs. This amount does not include programmed works.

How many reported claims did the Council have for damage property (e.g. cars) and/or injury caused by pot holes in the last financial year?

These figures are held and provided in calendar years:-

1^st January 2017 to 31^st December 2017 = 319

How much did the Council Pay out in compensation for damage and/or injury caused by pot holes in the last financial year?

These figures are held and provided in calendar years:-

1^st January 2017 to 31^st December 2017 = £20,960

How often do the Council carry out regular inspections for each class of road that they are responsible for?

What is the Council’s policy for prioritising pot holes in the terms of the class and the road size of the pot hole? 

The defect investigatory criteria adopted in relation to the identification of carriageway safety potholes on all inspected categories of road during safety inspections is as follows:-

“Carriageway Defect – Pothole – A pothole (sharp edged depression or void) is a safety defect when it is over 40 mm deep and it is greater than 300mm in any horizontal direction.”

For further information please refer to The Council’s Highways Safety Policy provided on our website.

How often did the Council comply with their target period for repairing pot holes in the last financial year?

Please note that the response times provided refer to the completion of safety defects.  The table above refers to the completion of all reported potholes, not just those classed as safety defects.  The table therefore contains data which does not have a defined response time.  The only way of obtaining this level of detail would be to interrogate each pothole record individually to establish whether it is a safety defect or not.  Devon County Council (DCC) is unable to provide this breakdown under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 – ‘Cost of Compliance’ which states that public authorities are not required to provide information where it would take more than 18 hours to locate, extract and retrieve.

In this instance, we estimate that it would take longer than 1 minute to check each record, equating to circa 867 hours.

How many reports of potholes in the road were made to the Council by members of the public in the last financial year?”

Between 1^st January 2017 and 31^st December 2017 the Council received 64,278 reports of potholes.  However, it should be noted that the number of reports alone does not reflect the actual number of potholes because some potholes will be reported multiple times, some reports will be of multiple potholes, some reports will be of defects that don’t meet the national criteria, and some reports refer to defects on roads or car parks that are not within DCC’s jurisdiction.