Speeches by Greenwood.

“Yes.”

“I saw the evidence provided by the commissioner in Scotland. He said that it is the road authorities who carry out the coring, and he operates in a co-ordinating role. There are local authorities in England that do coring, and the Committee heard evidence to that effect. There is nothing to prevent there being some co-…”

“In the way that the guidance is set up, it sets out how to do coring, and local authorities would understand the value of that. Anthony, I do not know whether you want to comment.”

“That would have required us to carry out a further consultation, so we decided to act when we had the opportunity to do so.”

“I am going to let you have a bash as well. I am concerned about performance if local authorities are telling us that utility companies are not performing well enough. The scheme that we have has developed over time precisely to do what you are asking, which is to say, “We do not think that it is performing as well as i…”

“The obvious question is about who is going to pay for it. As I understand it, in Scotland, the road authorities are doing the coring, but there is national co-ordination. In England, there are some local authorities that have coring programmes. We heard that Salford does within Greater Manchester, as does another local…”

“Yes, but they may be wishing that DfT would decide that we were going to pay for a national coring programme that would be over and above the funding that local authorities receive, which might be somewhat wishful thinking at this point.”

“I am not going to comment on section 81, because, surprisingly, I cannot pick out of my head where that is. I am going to turn to Anthony for that one.”

“There has been a big increase in telecommunications works, and a lot of new operators in the space, so it is about making sure that they are part of this. I do not know whether you can set out a little more clearly what the specific problems are.”

“In general terms, what is always very difficult to legislate for is good relationships. Where this works well is where you will have utility companies and the managers of the highway authority having regular conversations, where they pick up the phone and talk to each other. In some cases, you have people who are co-lo…”

“That is an interesting idea. I do not know whether it has been examined previously. They have co-chairs, precisely for the reason that you say. It is meant to be providing a group of your peers who are going to say whether you have acted in a reasonable manner or not.”

“That sounds like a planning issue rather than a street works issue.”

“From the public’s point of view, you would want to ensure that there is someone managing your local roads and trying to minimise disruption on them. From a public point of view, we will probably all be in the position of sometimes being very frustrated when our road is disrupted or dug up and it delays our bus or our j…”

“There needs to be some escalation to an appeal body. Is that the kind of thinking?”

“They might not be very happy about that, but there could be an opportunity for local authorities to agree, particularly at a regional or mayoral strategic authority level, not in exactly the same way as a commissioner, to set up that kind of co-ordinating role. We could look at that.”

“The permit scheme was specifically introduced in order to try to minimise the impact of disruptions when there are works on the carriageways. If it is installing a cycle lane, is that roadworks undertaken by the highway authority rather than street works undertaken by utilities? The permit system is specifically set up…”

“My instinct is that that should be part of the conversation that is happening with the local authority, which would be acting on behalf of its local residents and business owners, because you would want to minimise the impact that any works on the street are going to have to individuals, to businesses, and to the provi…”

“Yes, and ensuring access for people. I listened very carefully to the evidence that was provided around accessibility and the impact it has particularly on disabled people. Ensuring that we strengthen the code of safety in that regard is very important. I do not know, Anthony, whether we have any more detail on when th…”

“It needs to lead to improvements for vulnerable road users and to bring the safety code in line with other DfT guidance around inclusive mobility. A number of highway authorities have, in their submissions, made suggestions for improvements. For example, temporary traffic lights should have a pedestrian phase to allow …”

“The rules are there. The local authorities have a duty to try to co-ordinate street works, and there is a duty on utility companies to co-operate with that process. The system is designed to bring people together in order to have that co-ordination happen, but we have seen that it is challenging. Half of the works that…”