Quote:
Originally Posted by Heorot
ophic, the rules are that a council should have an inspection system in place and that any potholes found are recorded and acted upon within a time frame appropriate to the class of road. A roads very quickly and C or unclassified roads longer. All these rules are set in stone and if a council doesn't have such a scheme in place, it really can't defend any PL claims. Potholes reported by the public go into the same database. Also in the rules is a definition of how deep a pothole or defect has to be to be classified as such. I can't remember offhand how deep a pothole has to be to be repaired but I think it was 70mm for roads and less for pavements. The council I worked for had a scheme in place and was able to reject over 70% of PL pothole claims and won most of the few that went to court.
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Either the roads are fit for purpose or they're not. If they are, then there would be no big payouts and RH's claim would be false. If they're not, then perhaps they're not doing a very good job. I can see that under the current system, there's no incentive for the councils to notice potholes because as soon as they do, they're liable for it.