On March 6 my wife and I were driving round a narrow bend in Alderley Edge when we hit a deep, water-filled pothole.

The front tyre on our Mini burst and only our seat belts saved us from going through the windscreen – leaving us, in our late 70s, badly shaken.

I decided to just ask Cheshire East to reimburse the cost of the tyre, £110.24.

I submitted my claim with all the requested documentation; not just relevant items such as photographs of the hole, location and tyre, they even wanted my last service record.

Claim submitted on March 9. I then waited three months for a reply dated May 31. The reply is so ludicrous that I thought it deserved a wider audience to show just what dismissive contempt we rate payers get from ‘our’ Cheshire East.

It says that ‘as they inspected the road three months earlier, in December and before the start of the freezing weather, and it was all right then so Cheshire East are not liable’. This is clearly arrant nonsense.

Edward Garner

Wilmslow