1)Please can you outline the council’s budget for road repairs for the financial years:
2013-14 – £72,914,000
2014-15 – £75,492,000
2015-16 – £71,782,000
2016-17 – £75,500,000
This is the total highway infrastructure works budget per annum
2)Please can you tell me the number of compensation pay-outs made by the council to individuals injured by potholes on council roads for the financial years:
2013-14 – 9
2014-15 – 14
2015-16 – 13
2016-17 – *
* The number may identify individuals and thus constitute a breach of the first principle of the Data Protection Act 1998. For these reasons, this information has been exempted from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 Section 40 (2) Personal Data.
3)Please can you tell me how many of those who received compensation were cyclists? Motorists? Motorcyclists?
2013-14
2014-15
2015-16
2016-17
Devon County Council does not record this data in a manner that can be easily extracted from our claims system. This system does not differentiate between claims made by motorists, motorcyclists and cyclists.
To provide an answer, we would have to undertake a manual search of the archived files. We receive approximately 500 highway claims per year. For each claim we will have to open the file to ascertain the category. We estimate that to carry out this exercise per individual claim would take 5 minutes. Therefore, to conclude this exercise for all 500 claims would take approximately 104 hours to complete.
Under the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 public authorities are not obliged to comply with requests which exceed the cost limit of £450 (equating to 18 hours of time). For this reason, we believe that Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act applies (cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limits).
4)Please can you tell me the total amount spent on compensation pay-outs made by the council to individuals injured by potholes on council roads for the financial years:
2013-14 – £55,708
2014-15 – £82,255
2015-16 – £95,932
2016-17 – £15,850