The Bill Beneath the Tarmac: Auditing Road Compensation Before the Budget Vote

When councils meet to agree their 2026/27 budgets, highways spending will be presented as a technical matter of asset management and prudential borrowing. It is not. It is a choice about which roads are allowed to fail, which residents absorb the cost, and which contractors are paid regardless. The compensation ledger is where that choice becomes visible.

Every settled pothole claim is a receipt. It records a defect, a date, a location and a sum of public money paid out after a road was left in a condition that caused damage. It does not necessarily prove legal liability, and campaigners should be precise about that distinction. But it is evidence that the council knew about a failing surface and chose, for a period, not to make it safe. Auditing those receipts is one of the most concrete ways to challenge a highways budget that keeps finding money for payouts while claiming there is none for resurfacing.

Start with the compensation ledger

Send a focused Freedom of Information request to the council's highways, insurance and legal teams. Ask for aggregate data rather than individual claimant files, and make clear that you are content with redactions that protect personal data. Request, for the last five financial years and for the current year to date:

• the number of pothole and road defect claims received, settled, rejected and still outstanding;
• the total paid in compensation, separately identifying legal and administrative costs;
• the average and median settlement, and the largest single payment;
• the road name, ward and unique street reference number for each settled claim, where held;
• the date the defect was first reported, the date of the council's inspection, and the date of permanent repair;
• whether the claim was settled without admission of liability, and whether the council relied on the statutory special defence under Section 58 of the Highways Act 1980.

If the council says the data is not held in that form, ask for the field names in its claims database and the reports routinely produced for insurers or finance officers. A well-drafted request should seek the underlying dataset, not a bespoke report that allows the council to frame the answer. Keep a record of response times and publish it alongside the findings.

Match the payout to the repair backlog

The compensation figure is only half the story. The other half is the resurfacing budget the council says it cannot afford. Ask the highways asset management team for:

• the current carriageway condition survey results and the estimated cost to clear the maintenance backlog;
• the proposed resurfacing and surface dressing budget for 2026/27, compared with the previous five years;
• the number of potholes repaired, the average time from report to temporary repair, and the average time to permanent repair;
• contractor key performance indicators, including defect completion times, missed works orders, service credits and financial deductions;
• works orders and inspection records for the roads named in the highest-value compensation claims.

Cross-reference the two datasets. If a road appears repeatedly in the compensation ledger but has no resurfacing works order, that is a finding. If the council paid a settlement for a defect it had already inspected and scheduled for repair, that is a finding. If contractor performance data shows repeated missed deadlines while the council proposes to cut its own client-side highways team, that is a finding. Present it as a table: road, ward, claims settled, total payout, latest condition score, repair status and proposed 2026/27 works.

Build a public map of neglect

A map is not a substitute for the ledger, but it is a powerful organising tool. Use the aggregate data to plot settled claims by road and ward, with totals rather than claimant names. Add the council's own inspection regime, the road hierarchy and the proposed resurfacing programme. The result is a public map of neglect: streets where public money has already been paid out, and where the budget proposes to do nothing.

Invite residents to submit defect reports with council reference numbers, photographs and dates. Do not publish personal data from claimants. Do not identify individuals who have received settlements. The point is to show a pattern of public expenditure, not to expose private circumstances. Pair the map with a short methodology note and a caveat that a settlement is not an admission of liability. That precision strengthens the campaign; overclaiming gives the council an easy route to dismissal.

Turn receipts into a budget-day dossier

A dossier should fit on two sides of A4 and survive a hostile scrutiny committee. Open with the total compensation paid over three years and the proposed cut to resurfacing in 2026/27. Follow with the ten roads that generated the highest payouts, the contractor performance summary and the backlog figure. Then set out five questions for the cabinet member:

• How much has the council paid in pothole compensation since 2021/22, including legal costs?
• How many settled claims relate to roads that were inspected but not permanently repaired before the claim arose?
• What deductions or service credits have been applied to the highways contractor in each of the last three years?
• Will the council publish a quarterly pothole compensation and repair dashboard?
• Does the proposed 2026/27 budget increase or reduce the permanent resurfacing allocation, and by how much?

Submit the questions through the council's public question process, brief sympathetic scrutiny members, and issue a short press release with the map and the top-line figures. Ask parish and town councils to pass motions endorsing the audit. The aim is not a single news story. It is to make the compensation ledger a permanent feature of budget scrutiny, so that every payout is read alongside the repair budget that made it more likely.

The bill beneath the tarmac is already being paid. Campaigners should make sure it is paid in public, with the receipts on the table and the choices exposed.