I was driving along a fairly new all-purpose road that runs parallel to the motorway, in the dark, no streetlights and some way from habitation. It was my misfortune to drive over a road drain that in fact had no cover in place; the grate/cover was on the verge.

Both tyres and alloys on the nearside of my 2-year-old car were trashed, plus the suspension, leaving me with a repair bill just south of £1k. A friend told me that there were problems with these gullies, with the covers becoming displaced as traffic went over them. This information led me to make an FOI request of the county council which elicited the response that "the metal pins that secure the gully grate within the frame had fractured, which could allow the grates to be lifted out of the frame by the action of passing traffic."

The gullies/grids have since been modified by a road repair crew. I attempted to recover my repair costs from the county council but their insurers tell me that the road was recently constructed by a third party (a leading UK support services company) and that the council has a 5 year agreement with it to maintain the road in question and therefore it is the 3rd party’s responsibility to ensure that the road was in a reasonably safe condition.

I am fearful of failing in my attempts to extract my £1k from the 3rd party and wonder if you can offer any advice in case law or common law that I could use in my covering letter to them to be sure of success.