Could you please provide the following information under the Freedom of Information Act:
The total number of potholes within the local authority area is impossible to determine. Whilst we can provide the below figures, which represent the number of potholes picked up during routine safety inspections and those reported by members of the public, 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 do not meet the national criteria, and some reports refer to defects on roads or car parks that are not within this Council’s jurisdiction.
The number of potholes reported within your local authority area broken down by financial year 2016/2017, 2017/2018 and 2018 to date.
2016 – 2017 – 60,639
2017 – 2018 – 43473
2018 to date – 46261
The minimum depth and width in cm a reported pothole must be in order to be recorded as a pothole by your local authority.
Please refer to page 9 of the Highways Inspection Manual and further information can be found on our report a pothole page.
For further information see 2017/2018 budget Road Resurfacing, pages 74/75.
The amount of money the local authority has spent – broken down by financial year 2016/2017, 2017/2018 and 2018 to date – on paying compensation to claimants where vehicle damage was caused by potholes/damaged road surfaces.
2016 – 2017 – £35,357
2017 – 2018 – £84,332
2018 to date – £39,027
The number of potholes repaired within your local authority area broken down by financial year 2016/2017, 2017/2018 and 2018 to date.
2016 – 2017 – 72245
2017 – 2018 – 43473
2018 to date – 50863
The amount of money the local authority has spent on repairing potholes within your local authority area broken down by financial year 2016/2017, 2017/2018 and 2018 to date.
2016 – 2017 – £2.71 million
2017 – 2018 – £3.42 million*
*This figure is 54% of the actual safety defect spend, this is a typical percentage spent on pothole repairs in previous years. This is again due to a change in contractor and the way safety defects repairs are invoiced.
2018 to date – Due to payment arrangements with our contractor we are unable to provide this breakdown. This is because several potholes are billed on a single order with other repair types.
Costs up to 31 October 2018 for potholes found under our safety inspection process is £2.18m