Disclosure Log
Pothole Claims, Inspection Regime(s) and Expenditure (2020/21 - 2025/26) (FOI/7332)
Message from Nottinghamshire County Council - 26 February 2026
Dear Requester,
Request FOI/7332
Further to your request received on 17th February 2026, I confirm that the Council has now considered your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Questions & Answers)
I am writing to request the following information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Unless otherwise stated, please provide the information for the financial years:
2020/2021
2021/2022
2022/2023
2023/2024
2024/2025
2025/2026 (Year to date)
*Please provide figures separately for each financial year.
1. Pothole Damage and Injury Claims:
a) The total number of claims received relating to damage to vehicles personal injury alleged to have been caused by potholes on highways maintained by Nottinghamshire County Council.
b) The total amount paid in compensation (including settlements and court awards).
c) The total legal costs incurred in defending such claims.
d) The number of claims successfully defended.
| No of Claims Received | Total Compensation Paid | Total Legal Costs | Number of Claims Successfully Defended | |
| 2020-21 | 592 | 66,051.76 | 11,333.30 | 542 |
| 2021-22 | 660 | 80,443.78 | 18,875.25 | 631 |
| 2022-23 | 1084 | 41,189.08 | 32,673.09 | 1047 |
| 2023-24 | 2113 | 255,675.51 | 35,187.62 | 1637 |
| 2024-25 | 699 | 23,749.97 | 4,500.00 | 609 |
| 2025-26 (as of 18/02/2026) | 1104 | 4,091.18 | 0.00 | 157 |
2. Highway Inspection Regime and Section 58 Defence:
To the extent that this information is held by the Council by a contractor acting on its behalf:
a) The highway inspection policy in force for each financial year listed above, including inspection frequency by road classification.
Please follow the link below to the County Council’s Highway Risk & Inspection Manual (HIRM), this is a publicly available document.
Highway Inspection and Risk Manual
b) The defect criteria intervention thresholds used to determine when a pothole requires repair.
Please see Section 14 and Appendix 01 of the County Council’s HIRM (above link).
c) The target timescales for repair once a pothole meets intervention criteria.
Please see Section 15 of the HIRM (above link).
d) For each financial year listed, confirmation of whether the Council relied upon Section 58 of the Highways Act 1980 in defending pothole-related claims, and the number of claims in which that defence was relied upon.
We are unable to report on the defences stated in our repudiations. Accordingly, this part of your request is exempt under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, as the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit.
It has been estimated that an officer would require approximately 3 minutes per file to review each of the 6,252 relevant case files for the 6-year period. This equates to 312.6 hours of work, which is significantly above the cost limit set out in the legislation. We therefore cannot provide this information.
We are also unable to suggest a way to refine or reduce your request to bring it within the cost limit. Even the smallest annual cohort of claims (592 cases) would require approximately 29.6 hours to review, which still exceeds the time and cost thresholds for responding under Section 12.
e) Confirmation of whether the inspection policy defect thresholds changed at any point between 2020/21 and year to date 2025/26, and if so, the date of change.
The current HIRM was approved in July 2018, please see the HIRM title page (above link).
3. Expenditure on Pothole Repairs:
For each financial year listed above, please provide:
a) Total expenditure on pothole repairs and reactive highway maintenance.
The County Council does not hold this data.
b) The total highways maintenance budget.
| Financial Year | Capital Budget (£) | Revenue Budget (£) |
| 2020/2021 | £24,079,642 | £19,826,166 |
| 2021/2022 | £24,342,000 | £19,733,000 |
| 2022/2023 | £30,950,00 | £22,433,000 |
| 2023/2024 | £24,490,000 | £19,873,000 |
| 2024/2025 | £34,605,001 | £21,555,000 |
| 2025/2026 | £52,435,000 | £22,642,000 |
c) The total overall council budget.
Please see the below link to the Annual Budget report.
Document.ashx
d) The percentage of the overall council budget represented by pothole repair/reactive maintenance expenditure.
The County Council does not hold this data.
We hope you find this information useful.
The Council publishes Access to Information requests and responses on its online Disclosure Log. Only requests deemed to be in the public interest will be included and any request included within this log will be de-personalised accordingly.
To view the Council’s Disclosure Log, please visit our website.
Your privacy: we use your personal information such as name and address so that we can comply with our legal obligations to respond to FOI requests. For further details about the use of information about you, please see the information handling privacy notice on our website at:
https://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/media/4323566/informationgovernanceandinformationrightsprivacynotice.pdf
If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the right to ask for an internal review. Requests should be submitted within 40 working days of the date of receipt of the response to your original request and should be addressed to: Complaints and Information Team, Nottinghamshire County Council, County Hall, Loughborough Road, West Bridgford, NOTTINGHAM, NG2 7QP or [email protected].
Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.
If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, WILMSLOW, SK9 5AF or https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/foi-and-eir-complaints/.
Yours sincerely
Freedom of Information
Complaints and Information Team
Chief Executives Department
Nottinghamshire County Council
The Council is committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring all personal information is kept confidential and safe. For more details see our general and service specific privacy notices at: https://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/global-content/privacy