Benchmarking by the FTA: two-thirds of van fleets suffer pothole damage

South Lakeland District Council reports exactly this with a driver attempting to take evasive action and colliding with a stone gate post on a rural road.

As it says itself, it probably got off lightly as the incident could have been so much worse if there had been oncoming traffic or even a pedestrian or cyclist in the vehicle’s path.

The cost of this damage is not insignificant, particularly when you also take into account the commercial impact of having a van off the road: our respondents put the cost, on average, at around £3,000 per incident.

The recently-published Pothole Review commissioned by DfT and supported by, among others, the FTA, estimated that, on average, businesses affected by poor road conditions lose more than £8,000 per year on vehicle damage and increased fuel costs.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that, in the most part, our respondents are reasonably-sized, financially-robust organisations.

The direct impact on, for example, a self-employed builder would be immediate.

So who bears the cost?

It’s easy to assume those responsible for maintaining the roads ultimately meet the cost of damage and, while the ALARM report stated that the annual value of claims against local authorities stood at £35m (aggregated nationally), it is clear from our survey that few operators pursue this option.

Those who had gone down this route reported a less than 50% success rate despite it being, in the words of South Lakeland District Council, “a time-consuming process with detailed descriptions of each incident being required, including photographs, dimensions and location of the pothole along with detailed documentary evidence of repairs carried out”.

The council added: “This is very time consuming and unnecessary in these poor economic times.”