Lancashire County Council has paid out £194,000 in compensation to motorists whose vehicles have been damaged by potholes and other highway defects over the past three years. The authority carries out routine inspections of the more than 4,000 miles of road in the county for which it is responsible, in order to defend itself against claims that it has failed to maintain the highway network adequately.
However, County Hall has nevertheless had to shell out in some of the cases brought against it. The figures, obtained by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, show a recent peak in payouts of £77,918 in 2021/22. The total fell to £45,973 during 2022/23, before rising again to £70,265 last year, 2023/24.
It is not known how many individual claims were successful over the three-year period nor the number that were lodged in total.
The compensation tally covers all types of carriageway defect – meaning it relates not only to standard potholes, but other issues such as damaged gullies and grid and manhole covers that have become raised from the road because of the disintegration of the surrounding surface.
In total there are nine potential dangers categorised by the county council, each of which is assigned a timeframe for repair depending on its possible impact – rated high, medium or low – and the classification of the road on which it has been found.
High and medium impact defect fixes can range from two days on the most significant A-routes to 20 days on unclassified roads, while those deemed to have a low impact are done at the discretion of the highway inspector.
The frequency of the inspections undertaken to uncover the faults in the first place is also determined by the road type – with the highest priority routes checked monthly and others every three, six or 12 months according to both classification and the type of traffic carried.
Commenting on the compensation payments, Cllr Rupert Swarbrick, cabinet member for highways and transport at Lancashire County Council, said the authority would need “upwards of £160m” just to address the backlog of repairs across its patch, which excludes Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen.
He added: “Lancashire’s roads support more than 4.6m journeys every day and maintaining 4,300 miles of road is a huge challenge. We understand that potholes are a major concern for all road users. That’s why we’ve invested £17m of Lancashire County Council additional funding this year for safety defect repairs and highway maintenance.
“We’ve also recently announced that we would be investing a further £4.2m for permanent repairs across the county. We’d love to invest more, but at the moment we don’t have that kind of resource.
“We welcome the additional funding recently announced by the government, but we still need much more to enable us to bring all Lancashire’s roads into good condition.”
Last month, the county council was handed an extra £12.3m for its road maintenance budget in 2025/26 as part of a £500m government cash injection into the nation’s highways. It will take Department for Transport funding for the authority to £46.8m next year.
The Labour opposition group’s shadow highways and transport cabinet member Kim Snape welcomed the additional money. Asked to respond to the level of compensation payouts, she said: “After 14 years of Tory cuts, it’s encouraging to see a Labour government beginning to recognise the challenges local councils are facing.
“The Conservative administration at County Hall must now show how it will use the extra cash to benefit the residents we all represent.”
Subscribe to our daily newsletter LANCS LIVE NEWS and get all the biggest stories from across Lancashire direct to your inbox