Barnet Borough Council is the only authority to have refused to reply to a Times Series Freedom of Information request about potholes.

The Times Series submitted five identical requests to Barnet, Harrow, Enfield, Haringey and Hertfordshire Councils to find out how much compensation they had paid to motorists whose cars had been damaged.

The paper asked how many people had submitted claims in the last four years, the road where the potholes were and how much was paid out.

All four other authorities sent back detailed and comprehensive responses within 20 days, as is required by law. Harrow Council told us it had paid £13,000 in pothole compensation in the past three years, while Haringey Council admitted to paying out £37,000 since 2011.

Hertfordshire County Council, which is responsible for Borehamwood and Potters Bar, paid out £68,000 in just eight months and Enfield, and Enfield has paid just over £13,000 since 2012.

But Barnet Borough Council sent us its response back on Thursday, March 5 – a total of three weeks late.

The reply said it would cost more than £450 – or 18 hours of officer time – to look into our query and that the officer had therefore rejected our request.

The council says information about potholes reported and cars damaged is not held in one location, and that information would have to be cross-checked.

According to the officer, 350 claims have been made to Barnet Council, which would each take around two minutes to cross check, adding up to 13 hours in total.

The officer added in his response: “We would also need to look at each file individually to ascertain the specific damage to individual vehicles.

“We estimate that the time to retrieve, identify and extract this data would take a minimum of five minutes per file, and around 30 hours in total, making a grand total of 43 hours of work.”

The Times Series has appealed to overturn this response.