SPIRALLING compensation claims are soaking up nearly all the extra money local authorities received for road maintenance last year, figures show.

The number of claims against local authorities in England has doubled in the past ten years, according to this year's Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (Alarm) Survey.

On average, each local authority is paying out nearly £750,000 in compensation. In England, that amounted to £85m last year.

The figures mean that about £9m was paid by North-East councils after incidents on its footpaths and highways. This is a 50 per cent increase on the amount paid in compensation claims in the previous year.

As part of the Government's drive to improve the state of the roads, each local authority highways department received on average £800,000 in additional funds last year, according to the survey.

There are 10,000 miles of local authority road in the region, but a spokesman for Durham County Council said between 60 and 70 per cent of claims were as a result of trips and slips on footpaths.

She said: "We are in a similar position to other authorities in this respect and the trends are as relevant to us as they are to others.

"We are getting significantly more claims and both the settlement and the insurance premiums are costing a significant amount of money."

According to Jim Crick, chairman of the Asphalt Industry Alliance, which conducts the Alarm survey, the claims bill could be just the tip of the iceberg as it does not include the staff and administration costs in dealing with claims.

The survey found four out of five local authority engineers believe there is a threat to road users' safety due to road maintenance under- funding.

Mr Crick said: "If local authority engineers continue to receive just half of the funds they need to maintain roads properly, insurance claims will continue to spiral out of control and our roads will become unsafe.

"Local councillors must wake up and see that by not allocating adequate funds for road maintenance they are throwing taxpayers' hard-earned money down a pothole of ever-increasing compensation claims."