Like many councils around the country, the last five years have seen Calderdale Council writhing in pain under the heap of personal injury claims against them for slips and trips on pavements and roads.

The new millennium brought a pile of new headaches for the councillors in Calderdale and a truckload of cash has been leaving their coffers for the last five years amounting to a staggering figure of £2.4 million. During that time, they received 1,451 claims from people who fell on the council's paved surfaces.

From April 2000 until March 2001 Calderdale Council had 384 claims and they paid out £288,975 in compensation for injuries the people had sustained from falls on paved surfaces. But that was nothing compared to the whopping £557,097 they paid out the next year. For 2003 to 2004 things were hardly much better with pay outs reaching £575,411 though the claims went down to 226.The pay outs though can be deceiving as sometimes they are paying out now for a claim that was filed long ago. The whole process is very time consuming.

In an interview with Halifax Today, Deputy council leader, John Foran, blames it on the adverts from claims management companies and the No Win-No Fee law firms that encourage people to take a chance when in a different situation they may have just written a letter to complain but would have expected no cash pay out. "We see these awful adverts on TV encouraging us to claim for anything and everything. The council has a list of claims that they are working through which include accidents which happened as far back as the 1960's."

But Calderdale Council is not sitting back on their laurels. Dave Tee, highways manager for the council, told Halifax Today that, "We have a rigorous inspection regime to look for potential problem patches and try to identify them before a claim is made". But as Foran admits, Calderdale has many cobbled and flagstone streets and paving them over with cement would ruin the charm of the area. People must just take more care. Because of the perceived compensation culture and the barrage of claims in the past five years the councillors agreed in 2002 to set aside £1 million each year for insurance costs. These sorts of expenses take away from an already tight budget diverting funds from the core business of the council and likely having an affect on their ability to deliver.