Pat Regan: Worst road in Southport

Can you nominate a road, street, etc in Southport as the worse one in the area?

Road defects pictured in this article are all taken in the Southport area. However, plenty of potholes are far worse than these. How bad is your road?

Southport Residents are sick and tired of the many dangerous potholes in our town. Each week more tales of damaged vehicles and danger to cyclists and pedestrians are being heard. Danger to the public is clear but what about the perils to councils?

Any council may find itself in legal hot water if it takes too long to respond to the menace of dangerous potholes. Some instances have shown that particularly bad potholes may be deemed as ‘category 1’ defects. These require immediate attention, either by repair or by being rendered safe and repaired as soon as possible thereafter.

A lethargic council's system may fail the Section 58 test (special defence in action against a highway authority for damages for non-repair of highway) and potentially mean that the authority will be paying out compensation in court to anyone unfortunate enough to get injured, via a pothole accident. Moreover, one court case in southern England found that a council’s system of leaving reports of serious defects until the next working day, unless received by the emergency services, was inadequate. In fact the code of practice in force at the time required 'prompt attention' for defects, which represented an immediate or imminent danger.

That court decision was a reminder to local authorities that they need to have a sensible system in place for responding to reports made out of hours to defects, which represent an immediate or imminent hazard to the public. Such judgements mean that local authorities may not always rely on the benefit of a Section 58 defence.