Speeches by Greenwood.

“Yes, precisely. When we look at the numbers of immediate urgent repairs, they are predominantly from highway authorities themselves, which you can understand, because we have a lot of broken roads. If you need to do an emergency repair to a dangerous pothole, you need to do it urgently. They are also from water compani…”

“We would expect them to get things out and to report that as soon as possible. Anthony, I do not know whether you want to add to that.”

“That is why it comes back to the local authority setting the permit conditions. It is a permit; it is a request for permission, and local authorities can go back and ask further questions about the length of time and the traffic management that will be required. The utility company should not just be telling the local …”

“Yes, especially if there is less incentive to build a long-term relationship between the highways authority’s street works team and the utility companies they are dealing with. If I think about what has been described, you can imagine that happening once, but you would hope that was not going to happen repeatedly. You …”

“There have not traditionally been escalating fines, but we could consider that for offences or repeat offenders. As I say, the focus is on incentivising and improving behaviour, but, absolutely, if that is what we need in order to focus minds, that is something that we would be willing to look at.”

“There has been an increase in the number of immediate urgent repairs. Inevitably, one can understand this suggestion that there is abuse of the system, but we have not been able to verify whether there is abuse. When the DfT has spoken to companies, they are not admitting that there is a tendency to do that.”

“There is good practice out there in the highways world. There will be places where this is happening really effectively. Perhaps inevitably, local authorities are coming to the Committee and telling you about the things that are not going so well rather those that just work and where there are good relationships.”

“I am Lilian Greenwood, the Minister for the Future of Roads.”

“I absolutely understand the frustration felt by all our constituents when the roads are dug up, and particularly when they are not properly reinstated. We know that lumpy, bumpy streets cause difficulties for everyone. I reflected on the evidence that you heard from Emma Vogelmann at Transport for All. They have partic…”

“There are a few things in that question. Everyone will recognise that the state of our roads has become a terrible mess. I do not know whether it is as bad in Scotland as it is in England, but certainly that is an issue that gets raised with me very regularly, both through correspondence and just out and about as a Mem…”

“I absolutely recognise that, if reinstatements have been poorly done, that will be a contributing factor to it. I have now completely forgotten the second part of your question.”

“There is a two-year guarantee for most works, and a three-year guarantee for works deeper than 1.2 metres. I know that, in Scotland, they have moved to a six-year guarantee period, and we will be interested to see what the evidence shows from that and whether it makes a difference. Like you, I questioned why a two to t…”

“I do not disagree, except that I know that it has been consulted on previously and rejected, so I would want to go back to look at the consultation in a bit more detail and see why it was rejected. I do not know whether part of it would relate to the fact that you will sometimes get a multiplicity of reinstatements, an…”

“One of the specific purposes of HAUC is to share good practice and guidance about what works. That is from the people who are doing it day in, day out. We rely on HAUC to provide some of that guidance, specifically as practitioners, because they can share what works and come together to agree it.”

“It is still fairly early days in terms of seeing how it is operating. As I already said, it is about trying to incentivise good behaviour, and there is also a financial impact from it. All companies began on either a 30% or 50% sample rate, depending on their performance in the previous year. The information that we ha…”

“I should just add that, interestingly, not every utility company operates to the same standard in different places. There is variation. They will be using different contractors in different areas. I am not going to name any utility companies, because I will upset them, but one might be performing well in one area but n…”

“As I understand it, we have moved from a position where there used to be unlimited numbers of reinspections to a situation where there are two and then it goes into an escalation process. The thing that we want is not for utility companies particularly to be paying fines. What we want them to do is to do a decent job t…”

“They seem reluctant to do so.”

“There is an escalation process already written into the regulations, which is that, after two failed inspections, there is a three-stage process, which involves committees at a local and regional level, so there can be escalation.”

“It depends on what motivates utility companies. My own experience of seeing where you have a poorly performing broadband provider that comes into your area and gets a lot of bad press is that it does motivate them to say that they are going to do something about it. You can use that escalation process to hold people to…”