Pot-holes cost councils £2m compensation as our roads disintegrate

Published on Thursday 27 March 2008 21:04

IT IS the pot-hole version of a speed trap – once you’ve hit it, it’s too late.

A water-filled hole stretching across one lane of the Gallowgate in Glasgow’s East End caught many drivers unaware yesterday – and potentially to their cost.

The 6in-deep gap could become just the latest of thousands of road defects across Scotland which have led to compensation pay-outs totalling almost 2 million over the past five years.

The pot-hole was the worst of ten spotted by The Scotsman on a 50yd stretch of the four-lane road beside Millroad Drive.

Nearby residents said the road was a nightmare.

Ronald Price, 80, a retired road builder, said: “It’s terrible. The road is not built properly, with insufficient foundations.

“The holes just get filled up temporarily – they do not make a good job of it.”

Alan Learmonth, 35, an unemployed roadie, said pot-holes posed particular problems for cyclists like himself.

He said: “It’s quite bad – there are a lot of bits where you need to swerve in and out to avoid pot-holes and crumbling drains near the side of the road.

“However, I phoned the council about a couple of holes and they fixed them.”

Glasgow City Council paid 187,000 to drivers whose vehicles were damaged by road defects in the five years to last April. This was the third-largest pay-out level after Edinburgh, with almost 638,000, and Aberdeen, with nearly 197,000. Shetland, renowned for its well-maintained roads – paid nothing.

Some figures in the survey of non-trunk roads by BBC Scotland also included compensation for tripping and falls.

Taxi and motoring groups said the survey reflected the terrible state of Scotland’s roads.

Peter Spinney, who chairs the Association of British Drivers in Scotland, said his car had suffered more than 1,000 of damage from a road in Bearsden in East Dunbartonshire.

He said: “My last car suffered three broken half-shafts on a road here, at 350 a time.

“It has taken ten years to get that road patched up,” he added. “Local authorities only pay a small fraction of the pot-hole damage in their area.”

Bill McIntosh, the general secretary of the Scottish Taxi Federation, said: “I’m surprised the compensation figure is so low, because the roads are in an atrocious condition. They are so bad that taxis should be fitted with rotor blades to lift them off the ground.”

Warranty Direct, an insurer, has set up the website, www.pot-holes.co.uk, in order to advise motorists.

It said drivers should measure any pot-hole they hit, and photograph both it and the surrounding area, to show there were no warning signs.

Cosla, the umbrella body that represents Scottish councils, said a new deal with the Scottish Government should improve matters.

A Cosla spokeswoman said: “Local authorities are working within a tight financial settlement, but under the concordat with the Scottish Government they are now able to allocate funding to those areas which require the most immediate financial solutions.

“The removal of ring-fencing on funding gives councils greater scope to manage these solutions more effectively.”