FOI 26-134 Pothole Related Damage
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 26-134 Pothole Related Damage
- Request Date
- 09 Mar 2026
- Response Date
- 12 Mar 2026
- Information Requested
For each of the following calendar years respectively 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021
How many ambulances in your fleet have been damaged by potholes, including damage to tyres, wheels, steering alignment? What has the repair cost been?
How many times has an ambulance been taken out of service to be checked after pot hole related damage?
Have there been any incidents where a pothole related problem has delayed the conveyance of a patient to hospital? Can you please supply examples
Has your trust successfully claimed compensation for pothole related damaged to your ambulances – and if so how much compensation was received?
- Response
The information we can provide is limited to pothole-related incidents recorded by our motor insurance arrangements. Please note that, while pothole-related damage may also be dealt with through routine day‑to‑day maintenance and local repairs (for example tyres, wheel alignment), we do not hold a single centrally reportable dataset categorised specifically as “pothole damage” for all such routine repairs. FOISA provides a right of access to recorded information held at the time of the request and does not require the Service to create new information or manually reconstruct records from disparate sources.
Please see the table below detailing the recorded number of vehicles damaged by potholes broken down by year.
Year
Incidents
Cost (£)
2021
1
0.00
2022
2
1,568.02
2023
1
0.00
2024
1
75.86
2025
0
0.00
Q2 – The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold a recorded report or dataset that captures how many times ambulances were taken out of service specifically to be checked for pothole-related damage.
Q3 - The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold a category or dataset that records or flags patient conveyance delays caused by pothole-related vehicle damage/defects. It is for this reason we have applied section 17 of the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002 as information not held.
For context, the Scottish Ambulance Service is a dynamic, resource-led service; if a vehicle is unable to proceed or becomes unavailable, another appropriate resource can be allocated to support patient care.
Q4 – Based on the recorded information provided, the Scottish Ambulance Service has not successfully claimed compensation for pothole-related damage to ambulances for the years requested, therefore £0 compensation has been received.
