Huddersfield's potholes – a problem that just won’t go away

Apr 9 2010 by Joanne Douglas, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Potholes – a problem that just won’t go away

THEY’RE a problem that just won’t go away.

Last month Kirklees Council set aside £3.5m – in addition to £4.1m already spent repairing 7,000 potholes – to repair roads damaged by January’s cold snap.

But now two more Huddersfield residents are out of pocket.

Potholes have caused around £200 to a Highburton man’s car and £126 damage to a Newsome woman’s car.

Michael Johnson’s car was only damaged on Tuesday. He’s expecting a repair bill of around £200 and says he will put a claim in to Kirklees Council.

But, for Angela Dyson, the outcome is much clearer – the council has failed to accept responsibility for the damage caused to her Nissan Almera.

The day before the council’s inspector visited the site, workers filled in the offending pothole.

Angela, of Blagden Lane, said: “It was a situation I couldn’t avoid.

“What gets me is that the council tell people to put their complaints in writing, but when you do they don’t accept responsibility, quoting the Highways Act 1980.

“The roads here are in a terrible state. If you go out of Kirklees they’re much better and in North Yorkshire, well they’re a luxury there.”

Her car was damaged on January 18 and she had to drive it to a garage immediately to get it fixed.

She added: “As the pothole was right outside my house there was nothing that I could do.

“I put in a claim and sent photographs of the pothole and the bill from my garage.

“On the day before the inspector was due to come out they came and filled it in, but she couldn’t have failed to see the amount of new tarmac in the hole and I had photographs too.”

The motorist filled in forms, but at the end of last month was told the council was not accepting responsibility.

A letter said that ‘after appropriate consideration the council does not accept that the accident was a result of a breach of duty on behalf of the council’.

“I phoned them and said, ‘well if you’re not responsible who is?’

“The inspectors report puts this down as an unclassified road and not a main bus route, yet we’ve got three or four buses an hour driving up and down.

“They won’t resurface the road, they just fill them in again and again.