Local councils pay out £12,000 in pothole compensation claims
Over 200 claims were made against councils in Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire in 2015/16.
Councils in Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire have paid out almost £12,000 compensating drivers whose cars had been damaged by potholes in the last year.
A total of more than 200 claims were made by motorists in 2015/16.
But not all of them were successful.
In many parts of our region only around a third of drivers were compensated for the problem.
Meanwhile, in North East Lincolnshire just one motorist received a payout for vehicle damage caused by poor road conditions.
In North Lincolnshire and the East Riding, just over 30% of drivers received compensation for the problem. But in Hull, that figure was 75%.
Laura Dosdale lives in Hull and had to pay out hundreds of pounds paying to get her car fixed due to a pothole. She told Viking:
"It felt like I drove off a cliff and it really damaged my car and cost around £500 to get it repaired and we didn't want to mess about with the insurance so it came out of mine and my parent's pockets which was really frustrating as it was an added expense that I didn't need."
Jane Wilmott has also paid out twice to get her car repaired after driving over a pothole in the city:
"Twice I have had my car damaged and twice I have had to pay out around £140. The potholes are just horrendous and it's getting worse, rather than better."
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “These figures are symptomatic of the inadequate funding available for local road maintenance. “Year in, year out, the backlog of work on local roads is estimated to run to several billion pounds. “A pitted road surface isn’t just a problem for motorists – for those on two wheels it can be life threatening. “Just last week the Chancellor acknowledged that there had been decades of underfunding in the nation’s infrastructure and that he was keen to support targeted, value-for-money public investment. Providing the funds to fix our roads would be a great place to start and would show rapid results.”