20 Apr 2011

End of the road for the Great British traffic jam?

As councils count the £70 million cost of botched roadworks, Channel 4 News looks at the new initiative that could slash congestion on Britain’s roads.

Except in emergencies like gas leaks, firms will only be able to dig up the streets if they sign up to a permit first

Changes to the way street repairs are carried out could save hundreds of thousands of days of traffic disruption every year, Channel 4 News has learned.

In April next year, many more councils are expected to launch schemes that will see them gain control of how and when the utility companies carry out roadworks.

Except in emergencies like gas leaks, firms will only be able to dig up the streets if they sign up to a permit first.

The Local Government Association (LGA) is backing the move by Transport Minister Norman Baker to let local authorities introduce permit schemes without having to get approval from Whitehall first from 2012.

Kent County Council, one of just three authorities to operate a permit scheme, said it saved the equivalent of 800 days of road disruption in the first six months of its pilot scheme, from January to July last year.

If the results were replicated nationally that would mean a reduction of hundreds of thousands of days spent queuing every year.

A council spokesman said: “Before we introduced the scheme, utilities were at liberty to dig up roads whenever they wanted, as long as they told us. Now the situation is that they have to ask our permission.

“We are empowered to regulate how they do it. We can bolt these roadworks together, so if you have two or three companies that want to work on the same road, we can ensure that they do it at the same time.

“We can tell them to work seven days a week, or put extra crews on. And we made sure last year that a lot of work took place in the school holidays right across the county, so that extra 20 per cent of traffic didn’t face this disruption.”

A permit scheme would also give councils greater powers to impose penalties on contractors who let roadworks run over schedule or botch repairs.

The LGA said utility companies who dig up streets and fail to repair the damage properly are costing local authorities £70 million every year.

It said that in England and Wales last year, workmen dug two million holes in the roads and failed to repair 360,000 of them to the agreed specification.

At the moment, some utility firms get away with not paying for further repairs because councils are reluctant to go through lengthy legal proceedings.

A permit scheme would let them impose stricter conditions on the standard of work expected and slap fines on contractors who break the terms of the permit.

Councillor Peter Box, chairman of the LGA’s economy and transport board, said: “Roadworks are a pet hate of all motorists. Many would no doubt be surprised to learn that most road closures don’t even result in the condition of roads improving and many actually make them worse.

“Drivers are quite rightly fed up of being held up in miles of tailbacks while workmen take over roads for weeks on end. It’s not unusual to see one utility company starting digging up a road again within weeks of another finishing there.”