Cardiff Council has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on settling insurance claims from drivers, pedestrians and cyclists due to highway defects over the past four years. While the total number of property damage and personal injury claims relating to their roads and pavements is decreasing, a freedom of information (FOI) request showed the council still shelled out over £435,000 in just four years.
The FOI request made by the Local Democracy Reporting Service revealed the statistics on the third party insurance claims made against the council. They also showed that the single biggest amount that the council had been forced to pay out over the past four years in relation to highway defects was £20,000.
The response showed that Cardiff Council has paid £435,462 in compensation as a result of highway defects between January, 2019, and May, 2023. The figure paid out by the council decreased nearly every year since 2019. However, there is a deviation from the pattern in the statistics during the time of the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2021, when the amount paid by the council increased from £86,714 to £115,564.
