One evening last week I hit a large hole in a road in Burnham, Bucks with the result that one of my alloy wheels has been buckled and must be replaced. The impact felt so severe that I have booked the car into my local garage to check for any other damage. I reported the hole to Bucks County Council the next day and they informed me that they were not aware of it. They have sent me a claims form but included a sheet referencing ‘Legal Liability for incidents under the Highways Act 1980’ which states ‘The Highway Authority, will have an automatic defence to any claim if it can prove that a defect, no matter how serious, had appeared in between our regular inspections, and there were no prior reports received to enable the Council to affect repairs before the time of your accident’. I therefore presume that they will use this excuse to avoid paying me any compensation, which is what Herts County Council did less than three months ago when I had to replace the same wheel and tyre at a cost of £377 after a similar incident. The first incident occurred before the period of heavy snow and ice, so it could be argued that there was no reason for Herts County Council to suspect that roads were in a bad state of repair, although I still find this a poor excuse. However, immediately prior to this latest incident, it had been widely publicised that the cold weather had created an estimated 1.3 million potholes throughout the nation and that virtually all roads require immediate emergency repairs. Bucks County Council is certainly aware of this as the lady to whom I reported the pothole told me that my claim would take a while to be processed because they already had thousands of claims for compensation! I therefore believe that the excuse of not knowing about a particular hole does not apply in this case as they knew that all roads required urgent inspection. Is there any way that I can fight the council on this matter if they do refuse to pay compensation? Would it be worthwhile me taking this to a small claims court?