How to claim after your car is damaged by a pothole

The United Kingdom's roads are suffering. They haven't seen enough investment in recent years and, of course, every winter the roads become more and more damaged. This occurs accumulatively: what happens is that water gets into a crack - which may be small at first - and then freezes. When frozen, it expands, as it has become solid, which will consequently widen the crack. The more this happens, year after year, the wider the cracks become - eventually developing into the huge potholes which plague a lot of the UK's roads.

This means a lot of trouble for both drivers and their cars. Money and time is wasted on repairing damage caused by potholes which could have been remedied a long time before. There are a number of resources available to people looking to claim on damage caused by potholes.

The cost of damage caused by potholes is becoming increasingly apparent. According to research by the RAC Foundation, 50,000 claims were made in 2014 for damage which occurred to cars through poor road resurfacing, and councils have paid out a staggering £3m in compensation.

There's a lot that you need to do when making any insurance claim, and that goes just as much for damage caused by potholes. Initially, you have to have evidence of the pothole (as long as it's safe and legal to gather). Make sure you get the pothole reported to the relevant authorities too - looking out for other road users will place you in good stead, as well as the fact that you've done the right thing.

Issues are likely to arise regarding a claim and section 58 of the Highways Act, which provides a defence for highway authorities for failure to repair damage where 'the authority had taken such care as in all the circumstances was reasonably required to secure that the part of the highway to which the action relates was not dangerous for traffic'. This is almost always the case and doesn't mean you should cease with your case. After this, when you make your claim and speak to the council, ensure that you remain civil when dealing with authorities, as anything you say can be used in court. While we all know how exasperating the situation can be, you don't want to have the details of a shouting exchange you've had over the phone to damage your claim.

Ultimately, be prepared to negotiate. The RAC believes that up to £12bn is needed to fix the UK's present pothole crisis and this money isn't being made available. This consequently means that the council may be quite limited in what it can actually do about potholes, which is why any claim may be limited in its capacity to extract the maximum that has been claimed as compensation.

Matthew Fraser is a creative content writer for Discover Media