An angry driver has said she won’t give up until the council has paid her hundreds of pounds in compensation after a pothole damaged her car.

Sheila Burgman was left £515 out of pocket when her blue Peugeot 307 walloped the road cavity in January.

The 73-year-old was heading to Waitrose along London Road in Allington when she suddenly felt her car go down the pothole.

She said: “As I drove on I thought something was caught underneath. It was making a really bad noise.

“I got to the car park and saw my tyre was down so my daughter came and pumped it up. I managed to drive home but it was still making an awful noise.”

Sheila, of Boxley Road, Maidstone, took the motor to a nearby garage and discovered the shock absorber had snapped. She was left with a £515 bill as a result of the damage.

Days later, on January 6, the former hairdresser went back to Allington to get a picture of the pothole and submitted a claim to highways authority Kent County Council for compensation. Her claim was rejected.

Two more attempts later – including a template letter from Money Saving Expert’s Martin Lewis – and Sheila remains unsuccessful and hundreds of pounds down.

But the Maidstone mother has vowed she won’t give in and says she has no qualms about taking the county council to the small claims court.

She said: “I’m like a dog with a bone, I won’t give up. I’ll take them through the courts if I have to.

“It’s been really frustrating. They offered me £100 in their last letter but I won’t accept it. I won’t be satisfied until I’ve got the full cost of damage.

“The council said in its letter to me I should’ve straddled it, but I couldn’t see it. It was a busy afternoon and I was focused on the cars in front.”

Sheila has made a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the authority to find out how many people reported the pothole before she hit it.

The Maidstone resident, who has been in the town since 1987, admitted she won’t be making another claim until she gets the FOI report back, which is due by the end of the month.

Earlier this year, KCC bosses revealed there had been a drop in the number of potholes but that the number was “still way too high”.

Figures for January to April 2024 showed there were 18,853 potholes reported compared to 21,593 in the same period last year.

A KCC spokesman said: “All claims for compensation are thoroughly investigated and assessed in accordance with our duties under the Highways Act.

“The act acknowledges that a defence is available to local authorities when they are able to demonstrate a reasonable system of inspection and repair."