SURREY County Council has refused to pay out compensation over the county's first "criminal" pothole.
The hole, in Gatton Bottom, Reigate, crippled 20 cars in one night.
The situation became so desperate that exasperated drivers called Surrey Police, who marked the hole with a cone and issued a crime reference number.
But now one driver has revealed the council is refusing to pay out for damage caused by the pothole despite the fact it was reported nine days before the incident.
Louise Brehme was among the drivers who were forced to stop at the roadside after hitting the hole on the badly-lit stretch of road close to the junction with Rocky Lane on February 5.
The mother-of-two told the Mirror: "I was the sixth or seventh person that hit the pothole and it was an instant bang and the passenger-side tyre was completely gone.
"There is no light on the road and I had children in the car who immediately burst into tears because they wondered what was happening."
When Mrs Brehme, 39, asked the council, as the highways authority, to compensate the £94 she had to spend replacing her burst tyre and mending the car's tracking, it refused.
She says council officers claimed the pothole was reported to them on January 27 and was fixed within seven working days in accordance with the "severe weather policy," which was in place at the time due to the flooding.
The Redhill resident said: "The lorry turned up to start filling in the hole while we were there at about 8pm.
"They fixed it at the last minute, so long as you don't include the weekend, despite the fact in their policy they work seven days a week.
"I am really annoyed that I have had to pay out £94 for something that wasn't my fault.
"I understand we have had bad weather but for a hole to be this bad and damage so many cars that the police are called is ridiculous."
She added: "I don't understand how they can refuse payment when it was such a big hole; this is not a random claim, this hole was an issue for more than a week."
The council says it spent millions of pounds repairing potholes in the first quarter of this year due to the bad weather and about 30 repair squads – almost double the usual number – are currently at work as part of a £15 million operation to repair roads in the county which were left devastated by the flooding.
According to the pothole repair policy on the council's website, potholes which are reported will be assessed and then scheduled for repair depending on their severity.
The council had not responded to requests for a comment about Mrs Brehme's claim before the Mirror went to press.
