Nearly two years ago both my nearside car tyres were destroyed when I drove into a six-inch deep pothole left by contractors. I took some photographs and put in a claim for £250 to the council, who passed it on to the contractors. They in turn passed it on to their insurers. The insurers say the pothole was made by different contractors, and want the council to accept responsibility. One things for sure, it wasn’t my fault!
This is a familiar story. You could go to the small claims court and bring a claim against the council and both contractors involved. While the insurers may wrangle among themselves, in this case I suspect one of them will pay out eventually however generally speaking the highways authority can escape responsibility for such damage by showing it has a regular system of inspection.