2009 press releases

25th Aug: East Sussex County Council spends £700,000 on compensation for pavement falls - Norman Baker

Local MP Norman Baker has called for East Sussex County Council to spend more money on improving pavements in the area after figures unveiled by the Lewes MP showed that the Council has spent more than £700,000 compensating people who have tripped on pavements in the past five years.

The figures, unveiled in an answer to a Freedom of Information request from the Lib Dem MP, show that there have been a total of 536 claims made against the Tory-run Council by people who have tripped on pavements since 2004/05.

15% (89) of these have resulted in monetary compensation being awarded, while a further 24% (129) remain unresolved. In total, the Council has paid out £704,511 in the past five years, meaning that the average size of a successful compensation claim was £8,591.

Norman Baker commented:

"In the current economic climate, taxpayers in East Sussex are under more pressure than ever, and the last thing they need is to be paying huge compensation claims for damaged pavements.

"Instead of forking out such huge sums on compensation, East Sussex County Council should have spent the money on preventing these problems from happening in the first place by improving pavements.

"The Council must now invest in improving pavements for the benefit of everyone. If it ignores the problem, it will simply be left facing more compensation claims further down the line, and ultimately, it will be the taxpayer who has to pick up the bill."

Notes

1. A table showing the number of claims against East Sussex County Council relating to people tripping on pavements, and the compensation paid by the Council, can be downloaded here (Excel spreadsheet, 18kb).
2. Norman Baker had asked East Sussex County Council to provide details of how much it spent on pavement maintenance in each of the past five years. The Council's answer only provided data for expenditure on highway maintenance, making it impossible to distinguish between road and pavement maintenance.

|Home

|Issues

|Press

|Norman and his work

|Useful Links

|Contact Norman

|Site map and Search

|Norman's flickr page

|Norman's Facebook page

|National LibDem site