Ask the council's chief executive for the name and address of its insurance company and then contact it, outlining the circumstances of your incident and the fact you are making a claim.
However the fact that you knew the road was in a poor state and that the pothole had "recenlty appeared" might count against you if mentioned - perhaps it might be best to just submit a straightforward claim...:-)
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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Sorry, didn't think mentioning the council's name would cause a problem. Well it was a true statement of fact - I'm just getting fed up with them rejecting the claims, on yet *ANOTHER* excuse. I've already lost 2 tyres & a suspension strut to them in the last 5 years.
Excuse #1 = We already knew about it, so you can't claim.
Excuse #2 = We didn't know about it, so you can't claim.
However it is true what they say Scotland's roads are in a *VERY POOR* & dangerous state...
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You can just phone the Highways department and ask for a claim form. If they don't play ball, use your motor insurance legal cover / third party loss recovery, if you have it.
You also have two years from the incident to do the same with previous problems as long as you notified them with in a reasonable time.
BTW, they can't sue this site for mentioning them!!!! Though I can see why people would be so paranoid with things the way they are in this country.
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dont waste any more time
go to the local county court
get the forms for a "small claims summons"
fill them in and issue them against council for damages
you have a 99.99% chance of winning, take some photos of road in case they decide to defend it
they almost certainly will pay up rather than the expense of defending it if there is any doubt you are right
if it did end up in court (i expect they will pay up by return and this will not happen) judge usually takes side of poor ordinary bloke in cases like this
do it
further letters will get messed around and around, its a delaying tactic to put off as many people as possible
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Some very interesting legal advice here, much of it wrong.
Local authorities pay insurance companies significant amounts of money to handle claims like this for them: some of them play harder than others. Clearly it would be cheaper for them to stump up £60 for the cost of a new tyre than to fight the case, but they work on the principle that fighting this case will discourage 50 or however many other (possibly spurious) ones.
I am not implying that your claim is spurious however.
The Local Authority has a duty to maintain the highway in a reasonable condition. If it had carried out an inspection recently to a satisfactory standard and still found nothing, it would have carried out its duty to inspect and probably wouldn't be found liable. If it were recently made aware of the problem and had scheduled a repair within a reasonable time, again it has probably discharged its duty.
To fail in its duty, it would either have had to fail to inspect every (n) months (depending on the class of road) or unreasonably ignored an issue found at inspection. Otherwise there is no breach of duty and generally no liability.
Also, although if you are not a professional, the Court won't expect you to be aware of all niceties of Court proceedings, simply issuing without any attempt at another form of resolution is not generally best practice. This kind of claim is too small to be worth a solicitor's while commercially, unfortunately, but speak to the CAB.
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Some very interesting legal advice here, much of it wrong.
And on that basis I'll forewarn that I Am Not A Lawyer :)
However, isn't there a general difference in law between malfeasance (doing something badly) and non-feasance (not doing something)?
As I understood things, it's one thing to claim liability when a job has been done badly (e.g. trench dug, but not filled in), and rather harder when a job has not been done at all.
So DavidHM's comment's make sense to me, and I suggest that some legal advice might be in order before taking proceedings.
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