Welcome to our second panel. Could I ask each of you to introduce yourselves?

Good morning. I am Till Sommer. I am the head of policy for the Internet Services Providers Association—in short ISPA—representing broadband providers and broadband builders that are currently involved in the largest infrastructure project in the country, investing upwards of £30 billion in upgrading the UK’s fixed telecommunications infrastructure. I am happy to go into more detail a bit later.

Good morning, all. My name is Clive Bairsto. I am the CEO of Street Works (UK), which is a trade association across all five utilities that we tend to speak to, which are waste water, water, gas, electricity and telecoms. Crucially in this context, I am also co-chair of an organisation called HAUC(UK), which is the Highways and Utilities UK Committee. We come together with the Joint Authorities Group—the local authorities and highways authorities—as well.

I am Mark Whittaker. I am head of works quality and management systems at Cadent Gas. My expertise is around compliance of reinstatement and safety compliance while we undertake street works.

Thank you very much. I am going to kick off with the first question. Utility companies have a poor reputation among the public for causing disruption to their journeys, although they often blame the council as well. Is it fair to blame utility companies?

I totally get it. Frankly speaking, if you encounter roadworks or street works, it sucks. I got stuck in traffic earlier today on the way in. That is why I was a bit late for the first session. It was actually just due to traffic. Nobody loves encountering roadworks, street works or traffic disruption. It is annoying to everybody. The question, though, is whether this is an adversarial question or whether we just need to look at why those roadworks are taking place. In the case of my members, as I have already mentioned, we are effectively collectively involved in one of the largest infrastructure projects in the country. What they are doing is building a completely new telecommunications infrastructure. The work that is being done today is laying the foundations for the digital economy of the future in the UK. It is the backbone of the digital economy, the digital public sector and, frankly speaking, digital society. If we do not do this work today, we will effectively suffer in the future. It is essential to modernising the economy. It is essential to a lot of the Government’s core ambitions and missions, whether that is industrial strategy, AI policy, looking at life science or, even smaller, looking at your constituents being able to run a business from anywhere in the country. If it is in some shape or form digital, it is being able to access the global market without moving to London, Manchester or other centres. The stuff happening at the moment, at least on the broadband side, is of such a fundamental nature that I propose we look at it less from an adversarial perspective and more as a short disruption. What we get from that is a digital dividend that will empower the UK for a generation.

That will be the same for all of the other utilities. They have always been there, but we now have this new emphasis.

Is it fair? Yes, it is probably fair that there is a certain degree. We have to think about the scale of it, though. On record, the accountability of disruption from utility street works is something of the order of 5% to 7% of disruption. That is an exceptionally modest figure. Indeed, I was talking to my colleague outside who was on the panel before. For example, he explained things like water, rain and flooding. These all have dramatic impacts on our levels of disruption and peak disruption. Is it fair? Yes, it is, but I think we need to be aware of that scale. It is also worth me pointing out that when you look at street works in the road—it is on record in the documentation you have seen—about 68% of street works are carried out by utility companies; 32% of them are carried out by the highways authorities themselves. Just for context, Chair, it is worth putting that into the frame.

I agree with Clive. In terms of the utilities being pointed at for the disruption caused and the quality, when you see a sign light going out on a network you just assume it is utilities who are doing the work, but it is not always the case. There are a lot of roadworks coming on for good reason, such as junction realignments, pedestrianisation or electrification. There are a lot of works, and people just naturally assume it is all utilities.

In today’s session, we haven’t defined it, but obviously street works are works underneath the surface. There are other forms of roadworks that are usually done by highways authorities, which we are not really covering in these sessions. As you pointed out, Clive, they all add to drivers’ frustration. You don’t all have to answer this. Do you think there are methods or processes which have the potential to make street works less disruptive?

I think there are means under way. We heard some of that in proposals from colleagues on the panel before. Some of those are already under consideration. Some are in part implementation. We have a lot to learn both internationally and nationally in the devolved nations. A lot of that learning is being taken on board. I don’t think it is an industry that sits still. I have been involved in the industry very closely as CEO for about seven years. It is a learning industry, but there is also an enormous amount of pride by the people who work in the industry to deliver and get better at what they do. It is probably pretty obvious to everyone around this table that nobody generally leaves school and plans to join to do street works. It probably does not happen. Most people might leave school and at best think they might join a utility. The curious thing is that once people come into street works they understand the environment. There is extraordinary diversity in the availability of roles between front office and the streets—I will come on to that—and back office in the companies themselves. People tend to stay there. They learn, contribute and add value as they go. I offer that as a bit of context, Chair.

We will come on to skills and recruitment shortly.

Innovation is a driver behind everything we do in utilities. We want to disrupt the public as little as possible. Innovative ways of working are being trialled across the country. Specifically in gas, we use a procedure called CISBOT. We put an excavation at one end of our pipe, put the robot into the pipe and the robot works underneath the cadre, inside the pipe, doing the repairs. Obviously, that saves a lot of disruption potentially in terms of open cut excavations. There is innovation going on. Other utilities will be working on similar sorts of activities to try to minimise the disruption of breaking the ground.

If I may, I very much offer this Select Committee, if they wish, the opportunity to come and see that style of innovation in progress. It is absolutely transformative. It is just the tip of the iceberg of the stuff that we have under way at the moment. Other examples would be self-healing concrete. Who knew it is a thing, but it is. There is a lot of activity, but I certainly welcome showing the Committee these things.

Do write in with a specific invitation and we will see if we can take it up while we are still doing this inquiry. Till illustrated well how the demand for street works is changing and, effectively, increasing in recent years. You have also touched on how street works are being delivered. Is the increased demand for utility works having an impact on compliance and, overall, on the state of the roads and the pavements?

I don’t think the level of compliance is impacted per se by the volume in terms of what the companies are taking on and how they deliver what they do. What you say is absolutely true; the volumes are increasing in areas that we are aware of from the green agenda. From Till’s area, it is directly in telecommunications and broadband. We heard about the EV charge point operators earlier. Obviously, there are massive impacts of the green economy on electrification and the re-electrification of the nation, hydrogen deployment and all these things, which sum up together. There is a considerable burden. I think you touched on the fact that we might come back to the recruitment and retention of people in the industry. Clearly, that plays a small part as well in maintaining the competencies of people in the industry.

That was my next question. It is about having people with the right training and experience. Are there enough people? Are there difficulties in recruiting?

I will let Mark come in on this one, but we have specifically initiated a programme that we call the Faces of Street Works. It is what amounts to a way of explaining to communities and recruitment organisations where the opportunities lie for people to do activities in our industry. It is exciting. The average millennial will come along and go, “I want to build the backbone of my country with communications assets. I want to be re-electrifying. I want to be doing this.” There is an exciting opportunity for people inside the industry. Are we capturing that yet at the moment? Chair, frankly, I don’t think we probably are, but we have plans in place to do so. Do you have anything to add, Mark?

In terms of the qualified and competent people working on the highway, there is a street works register of qualified engineers who work on the highway. They will be qualified to work on certain parts of the process, whether it is backfill of the excavation, reinstatement of the hot lay or reinstatement of flags. That is all carried out throughout the year in competency checks. It is a five-year cycle to renew that qualification. There are sufficient people currently in the industry to manage the levels of reinstatement works that are going on. As Clive said, the challenge for us now is to bring new people into the industry, to make it exciting and to understand what we are doing as a utility sector building the infrastructure of the country for the future. It is how we get that younger generation through to start working in the sector.

Mark, you are from a specific operator. You are responsible for the standards of the works that you are responsible for. The reality in the world is that there appears to be inconsistency between sectors and even between specific providers. I am looking at you, Till. Colleagues have experiences, and there is a national issue, about at least one particular provider. Is there a difference between the new providers—the internet and high-tech services—and electricity, gas, water and sewerage? How do you ensure consistency within your perspectives among different providers?

The broadband sector has seen a significant level of disruption and change. There have been lots of start-up companies coming in over the last decade. That is incentivised by Government. It is a Government policy to have competitive broadband roll-out. It is highly important for resilience, keeping prices down, speeding up the pace of roll-out and having, in the future, networks to choose from rather than just a single provider in your local area that does your network and dictates the prices. It is hugely important from that perspective. As the whole process started, there were probably some teething issues with some of the new entrants, but over time and quite rapidly they have skilled up. They are using the same contractors as in gas or other utility companies. When I speak to my members, especially street works teams, it goes back to what Clive said earlier. The level of pride in the work and the significant processes around quality of reinstatement, overrun and how quickly you build is significant. It goes way beyond what is required by legislation. The legislation is huge. We have 160-odd different pieces of things we need to comply with. I have forgotten the number. If you want to do works under the road, our members go beyond that. It goes back to scale. I have said a number of times already that it is one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the country. It is also really dispersed. It doesn’t feel like that. If a provider comes down your road and digs a small trench, you might think they haven’t done a good job, but that is one of millions of dig sites across the country. With one provider I spoke to, if you look, for example, at the fixed penalty notices they have received, it was in the thousands for a year. If you look at the percentage, it is less than 0.5% of all the notices provided. It is scale, to a certain degree. In some cases, stuff goes wrong. It is a lot less prominent nowadays than it potentially was in the past. There has been a huge amount of upskilling and there is a huge amount of pride in the sector in getting it right. The other point, which is very specific to the broadband sector, is that we receive a lot of private and some public sector investment. If you do not get it right the first time, you need to come back and fix the issue. That goes away from your build envelope. You can connect fewer homes, which means you make less money in the future. It is not economically prudent to do that work. The very last point on this, and I get why it doesn’t always work, is that quite often the works that a broadband provider does are the first touchpoint with a local community. They have a vested interest in keeping that community onside. If that community does not then take up the service, you have virtually a stranded asset that does not give you any return on investment.

I am conscious of the time, so could I ask that answers be a bit briefer? One of our members will take up directly with you an issue with one of your members, Till. We will move now to managing disruption and co-ordinating works.

We are all aware of instances where the same stretch of road or pavement seems to be dug up repeatedly by different companies over a short period of time. Why does that happen, simply, and how do you think it could be avoided?

What you have to understand is that the complexity of what goes on under our streets is very varied in terms of what is there and how it is laid out. I mentioned that our foremost responsibility under HAUC—one of the subjects we do—is to help to lay out where equipment should be in the street. Very simply, just to paint a quick picture for you, waste water is at the bottom, water is next, gas is next, electric is there, and the telecoms and the ISPs will be in the top layer. Obviously, if you are excavating and doing a particular activity—let’s say you are the telecoms going in there—you are not going down to the bottom level at that stage. The second thing is that, when you are excavating, you are probably not necessarily going to find what is supposed to be there on the map. The accuracy of all the activities and stuff that we have on our streets is not precise. When you go down into those areas, you find legacy pieces of equipment that were not on the map at all. All of us have walked through London high streets or wherever and seen extremely complicated things under the ground. The complexity of what one is faced with when one is doing that is something that one resolves as you arrive there. To address your specific question about why we do not go back and all pile in at the same time, that is absolutely what we would aim to do. Indeed, we have regular co-ordination meetings with local authorities and highways authorities, who have the responsibility to co-ordinate. They have the responsibility to bring us together. Traditionally, what would happen is that there would be monthly meetings in your constituencies, or in the regions where your constituencies are, where the authorities would bring the utilities together and discuss what activities are going on. We, as utilities, have a duty to co-operate with that, and we jolly well do because it is in our interests. Later on, I will come to the reinstatement impacts when you refill the hole, in terms of what it means and why there are barriers to that. The simple fact is that what is there is not necessarily what will be there. Secondly, when you are actually excavating there is quite a lot of complexity in what you find when you go in there as well.

There is the aspect of repeated visits to excavate the road from different utilities. It is part of the process around connections. As developers request new connections to properties, they do so at different timeframes. They request an electricity connection. As soon as they pay, that electricity company has a certain period of time to put in that connection. It is down to the customer and what order they raise the work to be done. As soon as they pay, we have a timeframe to get that completed. If the customer, on a larger scale, orders it all in one go, it gives us the potential to go in and do it all in one excavation. At the moment, some of the processes for connection do not allow that collaboration effort.

If I may, I will add one particular quirk for the broadband sector. It largely gets lost, but we have a significant amount of infrastructure sharing already in place. Openreach, the largest network builder, is under a regulatory obligation to share their ducts with other providers. In many cases, that means you can roll out the network by opening manhole covers and pushing or pulling the fibre through, closing it and connecting it above ground. That has already significantly reduced the number of works that we would have seen if that was not in place. There is a good degree of sharing already. That does not mean we cannot share more. As we have already heard, the level of civils work involved between the different utilities is quite different. Broadband is usually very quick. It is low impact. It is shallow and narrow and can be done very quickly. If you wanted to leave it open for the water company to come, you would potentially extend that broadband work over weeks and weeks. It might be better just to fill it up, minimise disruption in the middle and then let the water company come at a later date.

Rebecca, do you have a supplementary question?

I did. It could either come in here or later. I know the Chair said that we are specifically focusing on street works, but I was just wondering what your experience is with local authorities when they are doing highways work. For example, a main A road has just been resurfaced in my constituency. It took years of campaigning. They have discovered that there might be a problem underneath the road with something else, and it is facing a re-dig. Obviously, that is an issue for the public. How much join-up do you get with highways saying, “We’re doing this work. Do you want to come and check?” I think we often blame you, and sometimes I wonder how well local authorities work with you.

On the other side, we have had a councillor saying that they have the monthly meetings that we mentioned but that many of the utilities do not turn up for them.

In terms of the road closure aspect of resurfacing works, that is a brilliant opportunity for us to collaborate really well. In this morning’s earlier session you talked about TTRO notifications, where we have to, in legislation, advertise in a paper. That is there and that is what we have to do. That notification goes in three months before we close any roads. In your case, they had the resurfacing scheme. The council, the highway authority, will close the road. That gives us three months of opportunity to get together with all utilities and the highway authority to understand what work we can do jointly in that area, whether it is surveying our assets to understand whether any maintenance is required or whether we can do replacement activities. Those co-ordination sessions should capture that, going forward.

You have all talked about the co-ordinating role of local authorities. Do you think that local authorities have enough powers to manage the effect of street works?

One of the things that we are calling for in addressing the Select Committee is a nationalised standardised framework, not more regulation, for collaboration. We think that that would go a long way to shaping and creating a much more focused way of having the collaboration that we have just spoken about much more effectively delivered. We think that would go an enormous way to helping us with that aspect.

To add to that, there are some local authorities—I won’t name and shame today—that are brilliant at doing it. On the digital side, they have somebody responsible for digital roll-out. They co-ordinate with street works departments. They co-ordinate with other utilities and embrace the period of change that we are in at the moment. There are other authorities that, frankly speaking, suck at doing that. That could be because they set the wrong priorities or because they have budget pressures, and that is totally valid. They are all under massive and significant pressures. The fact that some local authorities are really good at co-ordinating and looking at reinstatement demonstrates that the rules probably do not need to be strengthened. As Clive said, they just need to be more coherently enforced. There is a lot of learning that we can do from each other.

Perhaps it is worth me adding this. You talk quite properly about local authority constraint. There are certain local authorities where we recognise that constraint. Indeed, we fund and provide a pink body to help deliver that work and that level of collaboration. It tends to be in areas where there is a burgeoning telecom/broadband/ISP insertion capacity problem, but that is certainly something that some of our members would tend to do to help local authorities deliver on their responsibilities.

I have a final point about the powers for the highway authorities. The permitting schemes that are in place across the country allow the highway authorities to dictate what dates we can go in and do our works. They get visibility of our forward planning and pre-notification of the works we will be doing. They can say exactly when we can come in, so that they can build collaboration and dictate that gas can come in this week, along with water. If that is not suitable, they can move our dates out to a time that is suitable for them.

I have an example from my own constituency. A road called Bedford Road appears to be repeatedly dug up. One of the reasons I am constantly given is that it is because of the new-build estates in the vicinity. In fact, there are four different housing developments going on at the moment. I am interested to know if you think there is a particular issue around new build. When I raised it with the council, they said, “We’re unable to identify any collaboration opportunities.” That is rather like saying it was because there were so many different players. First, are new builds a particular issue? Secondly, can you give us some examples as to why it would be impossible to find any collaboration opportunities in a generic way?

I touch back on my earlier point around the new connection process. As I say, it depends when the customer puts in an application for the utility. It would be a sensible approach for that developer to put the applications in at the same time and pay for those services at the same time so that we can have collaboration. On the example that you have provided, without the exact detail I would struggle to—

It was not really to comment on that precise one. Generally, why are there not sometimes opportunities for collaboration? What are the barriers to that?

When new developments are put in place on the scale you are talking about, with 2,000, 4,000, 8,000 or 10,000 homes or something like that, often they will be done in pockets. There will be eight sequential areas, potentially owned by different developers. You are probably aware of that because there are different developers actually building the houses among the 1.5 million that we are expecting to be built by 2030. That means the developers have their own internal timelines for when they will be delivering and demanding, for example, the power that they need to run that particular area of development. What we have is potentially a bunch of eight developers trying to merge a requirement for National Grid, for example—electricity distribution—to come in and put a new substation in the region. That is an example. But they do not all know the sequence in which they are going to build, or the timelines in which they are going to deliver the houses or when the requirement is going to be. Those all come in at different times. That is a significant difficulty with developments. Developments are often cost competitive across their producers, as is the actual requirement for when you are going to need that utility extra provision. What that means downstream is that, outside the development, the roads that run where the existing ones are, at some stage, will need to be upgraded clearly and provide the energy to the substation that feeds the entire development. There are a lot of moving parts that the authority has to deal with—we acknowledge that—caused by a developer coming in at different times and places.

I have one final point on that. It is the planning element of it in local authorities. It is conversations between departments in the local authorities as well.

This is a quick yes or no question. Is better co-ordination hindered by the fact that individual companies have their own regulatory accountability? Is that a challenge that the DFT could look at?

Within the connection process?

Yes, the connection and the co-ordination.

There was one other piece of evidence, where we were told that one of the issues was that different utility companies had different forms of insurance and that was a barrier to collaboration. Is that something you have come across in your experience?

I am not aware of the problem.

Not the insurance aspects. It is the liability of physically doing the works. As you open up the street, you are putting standard light guiding out, so there is a responsible person for managing that part of the street for its activities if an accident should happen. It is the same for the backfill and reinstatement. You have a liability for that for its lifetime. If there is a de-fill that comes later on, who in the collaboration part is responsible for doing that remedial work?

That makes sense. We are really up against the clock in terms of timing and we still have quite a lot of questions to ask. Could I ask the witnesses to either not answer or answer in bullet points, if possible?

I want to talk about accessibility briefly, Chair. You are all fantastic advocates for your industry. I love the idea of the digital dividend for explaining what the benefit of some of this disruption is. Clive, you must have been ashamed by some of the testimony we had in the last session from Emma about things that her members encounter almost on a daily basis. What is it that stops your members from ensuring that their works are fully accessible?

If you will forgive the inarticulate way I am going to express this, we have had a blind spot. Right now, inside DFT, we have been contributing to, and taking the initiative on, a redrafting of what is called the red book, which is the safety book. We have been extremely forward-leaning in making that accessible, accessibility being one of the cornerstones of the rewrite of that document. We are utterly all over that. It is something where I think, to be fair, we have been a little slow in our industry in recognising the difficulties of travel for members of the travelling public, but also members of the public our colleagues mentioned previously. It is quite right to raise that.

I am grateful for your robust answer. I don’t know if the others have anything to add, Chair, but I am quite happy to move on.

Let’s move on then. Thank you.

We have all experienced the sheer frustration when roadworks, temporary traffic lights and barriers are left far too long after roadworks are complete. Sometimes they are erected before the roadworks are due to start. What more can utility companies and contractors do to reduce the time spent occupying roads and pavements?

This morning’s session talked about technology and communication across that. Currently, the Department for Transport has a system called Street Manager, where we share information on what we are doing, as well as the end dates when we should be leaving the site. Currently, there are overrun charges. If a utility extends their work past the agreed dates, there are significant fines in place of up to £10,000 per day, per permit. The co-ordination of completing works and removing traffic management could be improved by that communication process. At the moment it is a hand-off situation, as mentioned before, between the individuals doing the work. They are all created to be able to do certain activities. When we get to a certain point in time, it goes over to another set of people to come and collect the barriers and remove them from site. Sometimes, on the odd occasion, communication breaks down and equipment is left on site for days.

I have a couple of supplementaries, but I am interested in your opening answer to this question. Do you think that the current permit system—the latest iteration of it—is working as intended?

The current permit system, as you are probably aware, only exists in England at the moment. Scotland does not run a permit system as such. The permit system, as it exists, is actually a very capable system. It has a lot of opportunities to state what the requirements are and state by when it must be done, and the conditions that an authority or the network traffic manager wishes to place on it are significant. Indeed, one could say—we are going to come to lane rental later—that lane rental is superfluous if you actually use the permitting system properly. As Mark has just touched on, we have incorporated a permitting system through DFT into a Street Manager system that gives us a very capable system. Frankly, when it was fielded, it was probably MVP—a minimum viable product—but it has developed considerably since then. I believe we have a very capable system in the permitting scheme at the moment, but there is a lot more development that we can still take forward with it. We are pursuing that. Street Works UK has embeds inside the DFT who are working alongside the Kainos contractors to help make sure that system works slickly and well. We set great store by that in terms of our contribution. I think it is warmly welcomed by DFT as well.

On the permit schemes, I believe they work. The variability from highway authorities and how they implement them is the discrepancy between us all. The consistency of how they are applied creates a bit of a challenge for delivering works. You could be working with one highway authority in one way, but they might interpret it differently from the adjoining highway authority. We then start having different ways of working, which should not really be the case with permit schemes. There should be a consistent way of working across the country.

I totally agree with the previous points. Potentially, especially in the broadband sector, because we are doing roll-out at scale, the number of permits is quite large. It can also cross local authority boundaries, which makes the problem that has just been mentioned of different standards being applied even larger. A change that we have been calling for over a long time—there are currently trials going on—is the introduction of flexi-permits, where you apply for a single permit that covers a relatively small number of roads. The operator then has more flexibility in terms of where you do the roadworks. You can go in and out more quickly. In many ways, it is also more efficient for the local authority because, instead of guessing which of your potentially 50 or 100 permit sites you might operate in, the local authority knows where we are at a certain point in time. There are lots of benefits to flexi-permits. It is very technical, so I don’t want to go into the detail, but it is certainly something that is worth exploring. Trials are going on at the moment. We would like to see those implemented as quickly as possible. It doesn’t require significant legal change. It is completely revenue neutral and can work within the existing permitting system. It just adds a bit more flexibility and takes a lot of the admin hassle out of the system for both sides. That would then, obviously, free up time for local authorities to look at reinstatement issues and the other things they want to do in the system.

On flexi-permits, you have described some of the very complex excavation scenarios. Some very simple ones are more likely to take place in rural areas. Does the flexi-permit system have the potential to incentivise street works operatives to complete works in under the current agreed timescale?

Yes, I suppose it does. The reason for that is that it delegates to the individual utility the opportunity to move around that particular region very slickly and deliver connections or other reinstatements as and when they are required. For example, if someone has parked a car there or a massive lorry and you cannot do it at that particular stage, it means you can do it over there instead. In that sense, yes, it has significant advantages. To extend what Till said, what we are also working on with the DFT is an understanding of, for example, whether we could use a broader flexi-permit—let’s say a collaborative or a project-based permit—for areas where we go in and do significantly large projects, but confined to an area where the network traffic manager can just go, “Yes, I get it; that’s where we want to do it.”

We want to touch on lane rental, which is an overlay for certain roads and certain busy periods.

You are absolutely right. In Kent, in the way that that scheme has been designed and rolled out, after nine or 12 years of experience of it, it is working very effectively. The reason it works so well is that it is a well-constructed scheme. The same thing is true with TfL, the Transport for London scheme. It is based very generally on very high usage roads. I think you said 5%. It is somewhere between 5% and 6% or 7% of the roads. The issue, Chair, if I may come back to this, is a poorly constructed lane rental scheme. Currently, there are about five fielded at the moment. I suspect that by the end of 2026 we will be up to about 50 or 60 of them. For the less well designed schemes—not as well designed as Kent’s—it is actually going to end up acting as a tax on utilities carrying out activities. For example, some of the lane rental schemes that have been designed and put forward by some authorities are 24 hours a day. The utility cannot go in there without incurring an immediate penalty for anything it does. It disincentivises them to work in particular windows, as our AA and other colleagues were talking about previously, in periods of relatively low intensity. Where there is high congestion and it is a well-designed system, the lane rental schemes can work pretty well.

I think we made the point in our submission that a fines-based system is correct in terms of what happens when there are poor performers. From time to time there will be poor performers. We are very keen as a trade association that those who are not performing well are called out. Expressly, we would argue that there is a need for a performance-based fine system. You are probably not familiar with this, but there is a performance-based inspections programme, where you get reinspected more often if your quality of reinstatement is not that good. We think that exactly the same thing should be applied as to performance-based inspections. It seems like a no-brainer to have a properly incentivising scheme so that those who do well are proportionately fined less, and those who are repeat, considered and consistent failing classes get fined more. Their business model becomes less effective and, in due course, perhaps they do not exist as a company.

Potentially, yes. I think the Government leaned forward early, ahead of your deliberations here, and imposed an increase in those fines as of December 2024. We believe that a performance-based system, whether up or down on that, would be exactly the right way to go.

It is something that the DFT is consulting on. We move to urgent works.

I will let Mark come in on this, but I think it is pretty clear in the DFT evidence submitted—if I read it correctly—that there has been examination and inquiry into whether there was abuse of the immediate emergency activities. I believe very clearly that there had not been abuse of that.

If a permit is put in place with no notice, once it lands in Street Manager the highway authority has the ability to assess it and again dictate when we should finish work and how we work on site. They have the ability to impose variations, reduce work durations and so on. There are ways and mechanisms for highway authorities to manage that. In terms of the emergency and urgent side of it, obviously there is an explanation of why we have emergency work permits versus urgent works. There is risk to life, obviously. In the gas sector we attend the site within an hour, and then whatever we find we have to deal with. Generally, we deal with the situation first and then start collating the information for the permit, which could take up to two hours for us to issue out of Street Manager. There are genuine reasons.

Once we know there is a dig taking place, there are opportunities for collaboration, depending on the severity of traffic management. We talked about road closures before. If a road closure is required under immediate works, it makes sense for that to be visible to everyone, which is via Street Manager, and to say that we have this period of time—10 days or whatever it is—to allow all the utilities in to do some form of activity. There are opportunities.

As we have already discussed this morning, we struggle with three months’ notice between us all.

Yes exactly. It is communication. How do we improve that?

I want to ask a very brief question. On the point you have just made, it struck me that obviously there has to be a saving to the taxpayer as well if there is the ability to use the same works to do all of the jobs in one go rather than everybody re-laying tarmac, breaking it up and re-laying tarmac. There are environmental benefits as well. Would that be the case, or am I wrong in my understanding of that?

Our infrastructure in the highway is not all in the same vicinity. You could have an excavation that is required over there and an excavation over here, but there is opportunity for the same things, absolutely.

Thank you. I have a bit of a yes/no answer question. There is room for a slight bit of extension, although I am conscious of the time. Is the system for managing street works too complex? If so, how could it be made simpler and less of an administrative burden?

As I say, the permit system is an instrument that allows highway authority managers a great degree of accountability. The permitting conditions associated with that of 2021 are applied differently across highway authorities, making managing works for a utility undertaker really difficult because we do not know what we should be doing in terms of application to get it through the granting process of a highway authority. Just that consistency would improve the way we do our works.

It is complex. We have already mentioned that it is 160-odd bits of stuff that you need to deal with, plus lots of other roads. Yes, it is complex. The fact that some local authorities do it very well demonstrates that it can be done well, so information sharing. National standards could potentially be an issue to explore. Flexi-permits are another way of making it easier to operate and cut down some of the admin.

We are pushed for time.

If you look across the evidence that is submitted in the 70 documents or so that you have received, it is pretty clear that there is quite a significant amount of degradation of the quality of the road that has occurred over the last 15 to 20 years. I don’t think anyone would dispute that. From a utility street works point of view, the challenge is pretty well documented. We are often doing repairs, and the repair itself is very well structured. It is very clearly laid down for us in a thing called a specification of the reinstatement of highways. It is carried out in accordance with the standards required. That particular repair alone would, in existence, last for 12, 15 or 20 years. The challenge we have is that often the nature of the road surface around where the repair is being carried out is, as you hinted, crumbling and falling away. The overall area around it is not a satisfactory area to repair it into. That causes us significant concern. I am not saying that is the source of all activities of failed repairs, but it is certainly something that is very high on our own agenda of awareness of what is going on in the road.

As was raised earlier, it is not just utilities and broadband companies doing street works; it is highway authorities and local authorities doing the same work for a variety of reasons. Our members quite often tell us that the same standards are not being applied across both sides. There are stronger standards applied to the work being done by the utility and broadband companies, which is correct. It is potentially worth looking into whether those standards are properly applied for highway authority work as well.

I have a final point. Clive mentioned the standards we have to work to—the specification for reinstatement of highways. What we need to put back in the ground is clearly defined. We are inspected, at cost to the utility, at 20% volume, which is a full utility cost. The specification dictates what questions are asked and answered by highway authorities. That gives you a sample compliance at the end of their inspections. Across the last two years we have had 260,000 inspections on the works that we have undertaken, at a 92% compliance rate. We do not have a major issue with the quality of reinstatement of utility work. We see issues with potholes that are not linked to reinstatements of utilities.

I want to ask about the 2023 inspections regime. We have heard conflicting evidence about its effectiveness, so I would appreciate your take and any comments that you might have on coring and its advantages for monitoring road quality.

In terms of the performance-based inspections regime that came in in 2023, as Clive mentioned earlier, it is designed to increase inspections on poor performing utilities. It has been in place now for just over a year in terms of the final agreed numbers. I personally think it is too early to take a view on whether it is working as expected. On the coring aspect of it, the coring is required to understand the technical compliance. I will explain what I mean by technical compliance. You have a specification that is performance based, on whether you are performing at the end of your guarantee period. You have a technical aspect of it to understand whether you constructed the reinstatement correctly in the first place. Coring is a vital part of understanding our technical compliance. At the moment coring is done by various organisations across the country to different standards, with different ways of testing. It is also always a lagging measure. It is two or three years after we have done the reinstatement, which does not allow for the improvement process of working for a team next week or next month to be able to drive that improvement.

That is why we are calling for a centralised, standardised coring system. To be perfectly blunt with you, there are some commercial companies doing coring that are not really being completely honest and truthful in what they do. That would be our observation. They are incentivised to draw problems with a core, which we are not always persuaded there are.

Sticking with the reinstatement theme, you may be aware that in Scotland the period for the guarantee of that reinstatement is six years, compared with two years in England. Would you support implementing that six-year guarantee period in England?

No, we absolutely would not. We had a long conversation in the last two or three days about how to address this for the Committee. It is an extremely complex topic. Chair, if it is all right, I would like to provide you with a written note which sets it out.

That would be helpful.

I could talk about it, to be honest, for about 45 minutes. It really is an extremely complicated area, both delving into the commercials and in terms of the practical guarantees that lie behind it.

Adding to that, it has only recently been implemented in Scotland. It would be subject to submission there. It is worth looking at how it is actually going to work in practice in Scotland before rolling it out nationally. It is a good test case in Scotland, and we can probably learn from that over time.

There are some things about Scotland which we think would be very proactively successful. You are going to hear from the Scottish Road Works Commissioner in about two or three weeks.

You have anticipated my next question. The Chair will love you.

I thought I might. For the various reasons that Mark has alluded to and indeed that Till has discussed, we believe in collective performance for us as an industry, involving both utilities and authorities. We come together, as I described, at HAUC. We have a dispute resolution process. It does not really have the captured oversight that it needs. We have seen over the 20 years for which the SRWC—the Scottish Road Works Commissioner—has existed, across four consecutive SRWCs, that it has driven a quality and a standard across the board that has been good. I think it has brought it up to a standard where, to be honest, it should have been a long time ago. I sit on the RAUC (Scotland)—Roads Authorities and Utilities Committee Scotland—and the SRWC has a beneficial presence and activity in that sense, yes.

Mr Sommer and Mr Whittaker, do you agree with that?

Yes, I agree. Anything that brings consistency and parity in terms of how we all work in the public highway I fully support.

Yes, totally.

That is an excellent conclusion to today’s session. I thank the witnesses very much for their evidence. It has been really helpful. We look forward to gathering further evidence as we progress with our inquiry. As I said to the other witnesses, if you think of something that you would like to add to your written evidence, do send it in. That concludes today’s meeting.