Pothole Repair and Damage Claims

Please provide figures for the most recent full calendar year (or financial year, if easier):

1. The number of potholes reported (monthly breakdown if possible).

Potholes reported by the public:

2024 – 44,079

2. The average number of calendar days between a pothole being reported and repaired.

2024 – 4.96

3. The percentage of reported potholes repaired within:

This information is held in financial years.

For 2024/25 the figures are:

7 days

84.96%

14 days

10.33%

Please note that 14 days is not a standard repair window under the Highway Safety Policy and is not a deadline that we hold the contractor accountable to.

28 days

4.71%

4. The number of vehicle damage claims submitted as a result of potholes.

In 2024/25 Devon County Council received 1,838 claims.

5. The number of pothole-related claims accepted and the total amount of compensation paid.

In 2024/25 288 claims were accepted and £81,251 compensation was paid.

6. If recorded, the types of vehicles (make/model or vehicle category) involved in these damage claims.

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. 

We do not request this information from claimants. It is usually contained within the supporting documents they provide when submitting a claim (e.g. insurance certificate), but we do not record the details on our system. Therefore we would have to extract this information from the individual claim documents and to locate and retrieve the information from 1,838 claims at 5 minutes per claim would take over 153 hours and is therefore in excess of the cost limit.

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.