Lancashire County Council member aims to take his authority to court over pot holes
County Cllr Michael Lavalette, is searching for a solicitor willing to mount a so-called ‘class action’, designed to recover the cost of vehicle damage caused by potholes
One of Lancashire County Council’s own members is aiming to take the authority to court over the condition of the roads that it is responsible for maintaining.
County Cllr Michael Lavalette, an independent who represents the Preston Central East division, is searching for a solicitor willing to mount a so-called ‘class action’, designed to recover the cost of vehicle damage caused by potholes.
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that the Progressive Lancashire main opposition group – of which he is a part – wants to increase the chances of success for individual motorists who make claims against the county council after ending up out of pocket as a result of defects in the road.
The Reform UK-run authority stresses on the form that drivers have to complete as part of that process that the majority of such compensation attempts are “successfully defended” – in other words, County Hall does not have to pay out.
County Cllr Lavalette believes that a collective legal victory for a small group of road users – whose vehicles have come off badly after hitting a pothole – would benefit future solo claimants who can often ill afford an unexpected repair bill.
“Ten or 15 people would act as a case study within the class action – and then I’d hope that would allow other people, very quickly, to go through the council’s existing small claims scheme and get the cost of repairs returned to them.
“We’re in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis – people are struggling to pay rent and put food on the table – and somebody was recently telling me that their tyre bill was £300 after pothole damage. If your axles get bent, you’re talking significantly more than that.
“This is an unnecessary and, for many people, really unaffordable cost that they’re now facing.
“So I’m calling for a lawyer who, ideally, is locally based and willing to work on a no-win-no-fee basis.
“We will then be looking for a group of people to be representative of the wider motoring base across Lancashire whose cars have been damaged by Reform’s failure to deal with the pothole crisis over the last five months,” said County Cllr Lavalette.
The county council has not directly responded to the prospect of a group legal action, but it did tell the LDRS that motorists may be able to make a claim for compensation “in some circumstances” if their vehicle is damaged.
The authority also stressed that it prioritised the repair of those potholes that pose “the greatest risk to safety”.
Reform UK in Lancashire has also been approached for comment.
All local authorities with highway responsibilities have a ‘special defence’ to claims for damage or injury resulting from the condition of the roads – if they can show they have taken reasonable steps to maintain them.
Lancashire County Council, which is responsible for most-non-motorway routes in its patch – an area that excludes Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen – advises would-be compensation seekers: “Although unfortunately incidents do occur, very few are actually attributable to the negligence of the county council.
“In order to be successful, a claimant will need to show that the section of highway in question has not been maintained properly, according to its status, and was therefore unsafe. A claimant must also show that this was the cause of the incident and that a loss or injury has been sustained.
“The authority will not have to pay compensation if it can show that it has carried out inspections and repairs as planned and reported, satisfying the requirements of highways legislation.”
The county council adds that potholes can appear “very quickly” – and the mere presence of one “does not necessarily mean the authority is liable”.
Highway repair targets set by County Hall dictate how quickly problems like potholes should be fixed.
That framework, which was streamlined earlier this year, breaks down repairs into four priority categories, each with their own response time – of four hours, two days, five days or 20 days, depending on the level of risk posed by an individual defect. Potholes must usually be at least 40mm deep before they will be filled.
However, the authority’s performance against its timeframe targets will not be available for a full six-month period, because of problems caused by a concurrent change to reporting processes and the introduction of a new IT system. It means comparable data between September 2025 and March 2026 has not been published.
As the LDRS revealed in February, the county council has no plans to retrospectively undertake the work that would be required to put the statistics gathered during that time into a suitable format for future reporting.
The authority is continuing to track the overall number of carriageway defects – and, at its budget-setting meeting at the end of February, cabinet member for highways and transport Warren Goldsworthy said Lancashire had 47,000 fewer potholes as of just before Christmas than it did at the same point 12 months earlier when the Conservatives were in control of the county council. The LDRS has since requested the most recent equivalent figure.
County Cllr Lavalette says he believes his own experience of trying to secure repairs to one of the main routes in Preston shows that the county council’s targets – and, in turn, their duty to maintain the highway – are not being met.
He says he first reported issues on the A6 Garstang Road in early January – and was told that they would be tackled by the end of February. However, work began on the busy route only this week, during which it has been closed overnight because of the extent of the repairs required.
That puts the response “way outside of the deadline”, even if the problems had only been deemed worthy of repair within the maximum 20-day period, County Cllr Lavalette said.
He told the LDRS that he hoped a successful class action would have the secondary effect of forcing the authority to divert the funding it sets aside for routine maintenance to deal with more significant faults as they emerge.
“We want to put pressure on the county council to deal with their responsibilities and keep to the 20-day rule.
“Normal repairs are just continuing, but roads that are being repaired under that strategy are not in anything like the state that the main arterial roads are.
“In Preston, for instance, Victoria Road, Higher Bank Road and Lower Bank Road which were amongst the first routes slated for pre-planned resurfacing this year were not that bad.
“A class action would obviously cost Lancashire County Council some amount of money, but that is their responsibility, because they have failed to deal with this – and the political cost and the financial cost has to be borne by them as a consequence,” County Cllr Lavalette said.
County Hall set a £72m budget for the upkeep of its highways during the 2026/27 financial year – £48.2m of which is government funding, supplemented by £18.4m agreed at the authority’s budget in February, along with unspent money carried over from last year.
It is expected that at least £28m of the total amount available will be absorbed by filling in potholes that appear during the next 12 months, while almost £21m has been reserved for routine resurfacing designed to help maintain the overall condition of the 4,400-mile network for which the county council is responsible.
The remainder of the cash is earmarked for other repairs and upgrades, including to bridges, traffic lights and streetlamps.
A spokesperson for Lancashire County Council said in response to the issues raised in this report: “This winter has been one of the wettest winters on record, causing widespread damage to roads.
“Our teams are working hard to fix defects across the county, prioritising those that pose the greatest risk to safety and repairing all potholes that meet our intervention levels.
“Through our new maintenance contract, repairs are now around three times larger than before and backed by a 12‑month warranty, making roads stronger and helping prevent potholes returning.
“Alongside this, £72m is being invested in Lancashire’s roads this year, focusing on the routes people use every day.
“In some circumstances, people may be able to make a claim for compensation if their vehicle is damaged.
“More information is available on the Lancashire County Council website.”
Speaking at a cabinet meeting in February, County Cllr Goldsworthy said the weather the previous month “wasn’t kind to us” and, at the subsequent budget debate, that “terrible damage” had been done over the course of the first eight weeks of the year.
He apologised and pledged to “get on top of it”, but added: “Can you imagine where we’d be right now if we weren’t nearly 50,000 potholes better off at the end of last year?”
What is a class action?
They are claims brought by a group of people on the basis of alleged wrongdoing by a particular party, which it is argued has caused loss to the claimants “in broadly speaking the same, or at least a similar, way”, according to law firm Pinsent Masons.
“Often, the loss suffered by any single claimant is not large enough to make individual claims economically viable, but pursuing claims on a collective basis brings economies of scale,” the company explains on its website.
“For defendants, dealing with multiple claims on a collective basis can also offer efficiencies. For either party, however, there are risks and challenges to navigate.”
Claiming against the county council
In order for an individual motorist to make a compensation claim against Lancashire County Council for vehicle damage caused by a pothole, they have to provide the authority with information including:
‘This is an emergency now’
Progressive Lancashire – an alliance of independents and the Green Party that forms the main opposition group at Lancashire County Council – has called on the authority to declare a “potholes emergency”.
The group’s leader, Azhar Ali, has written to highways and transport cabinet member County Cllr Goldsworthy, stating: “Numerous promises have been made by the Reform-led county council to fix potholes, but in most parts of the county the situation is getting worse – not better.
“Those potholes are now craters and the least we need to do is promote a compensation scheme to ensure our taxpayers are recompensed for the damage to their cars because of Lancashire County Council’s failings.”
County Cllr Ali told the LDRS that he wanted to see a cross-party scrutiny committee established that is solely focused on highway condition. Currently, broader transport issues are part of the brief of a committee that also scrutinises topics related to economic growth and the environment.
“We need a committee to ensure proper action on potholes, “ County Cllr Ali said.
Reform UK in Lancashire was approached for comment.
Last week, the government announced that local authorities that fail to demonstrate they are maintaining roads effectively could lose around a third of their funding next year.
Lancashire County Council was rated ‘amber’ for its performance in 2025/26 under a new traffic light-style system introduced by the Department for Transport. That overall rating was based on three measures – the current condition of local roads (amber), how much is spent on highway maintenance (green) and the degree to which the authority adopts ‘best practice’ in that maintenance (amber).