POTHOLES

And here is another good one - http://www.fillthathole.org.uk/

 

There is - a lot of councils make reporting potholes and road defects very 'challenging' to say the least. Only yesterday, I reported 9 different defects across 4 different council/local authority areas - London Boroughs of Richmond and Hounslow make it really easy to report problems (although Hounslow was terrible until quite recently); Spelthorne Council's website is less than useless, however problems are reasonably easy to report via Surrey County Council's website.

TfL roads however - - well, it is easy enough once you find the relevant webpage on their site, and then keep it well hidden away!

Sites like those above take the donkey work out of it for you - you put the problem on their site, which in turn works out the responsible authority and then sends the complaint on to them - in many cases you are also granted anonymity by using these third party sites whereas most of the local authority ones want your personal details.

 

Excellent websites - particularly the first one as that also gives advice on claiming.

 

Neither do I, but I know that there are some people who don't like the idea of giving personal details. In fairness, I have had replies already on a couple of them that I reported the other day, and both have said that they have confirmed the defects and they will be repaired within 7 days; the problem is, that the repairs are likely to be a bucket of tar thrown in the hole and then trodden in by a hob-nail boot before moving on to the next job - so the holes will almost certainly be back.

Tell you what really beats me is the lack of logic that councils apply - only today I was discussing with a colleague about a couple of sets of works that are getting done on some of our bus routes; one set is resurfacing works in a town centre area (fair enough), but one of the roads being resurfaced was only done last year! Yet in the same borough, there is a road that has a surface that is akin to the moon, and has been like that for years - and all they do is keep lobbing buckets of tar in the holes.

The same council has put up other signs that they intend to resurface all four junctions at a crossroads in the coming weeks - - yet, I know for certain that there are plans to completely redesign that particular crossroads and change the layout of the islands etc in a couple of months time; why on earth would they resurface it, just to dig it up?

 

Fantastic idea, but as you say it wouldn't catch on - not because its cheap and simple, but simply because it would put them in a position where they couldn't ignore the holes and claim that they didn't know about them.

 

That's the trouble pete - to get them to pay out, you have to prove that they were negligent in some way (so were able to prove that they knew of the pothole and had not done anything about it within a 'reasonable' time); the reason that there are so many councils named on the leaflet is simply because it hasn't come from the council at all - it has come from their claims handlers which will be a private company who just happen to contract to all those different councils.

Bit galling that they can afford to pay for a claims handling company to make a profit out of them, but can't afford to provide good routine maintenance of the roads to prevent the claims in the first place, isn't it?