Speeches by Greenwood.

“The duty is exactly the same. For local authorities, it is that you should hold co-ordination meetings and, for utility companies, it is that you should co-operate. There is an expectation that they should be turning up to those meetings. For local authorities—and I would be willing to look at this—is there a question …”

“I suspect that it is variable between different places. I am sure that there will be examples of where there are good relationships—and I know that there are—where those meetings are happening. There are also examples of where local authorities and utility companies have people co-located in regional hubs, so you have …”

“It is something that we could look at. The permits are the mandatory part of it. Given that a lot of the works are being carried out at relatively short notice, I do not know whether you would get the value out of making them mandatory, but I do not see any reason why utility companies would not be sharing their advanc…”

“There are restrictions when a road has just been resurfaced.”

“I absolutely get the gist of what you are saying: when there appears to be an ideal opportunity for co-ordination, why does it not happen? There can be a variety of reasons. As you heard in evidence, utilities are operating at different depths. Generally, if you are talking about water companies, they are having to do …”

“It is incredibly challenging in those circumstances that you have described. Developers will want different utilities at different times. I recall from the evidence that getting the water in might be an earlier thing than getting the electricity in. We can look at whether we could do more to ensure that developers shar…”

“Highway authorities can use permits and the permit conditions to set the duration of works and require working on particular days and at particular times, because we do not want works to be in place any longer than is absolutely necessary. There can be disadvantages. You can use permit conditions to require weekend wor…”

“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 …”

“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.”

“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…”

“I have not heard any suggestion that immediate emergency, where there is a danger to life, is in need of significant change. Indeed, the percentage of works under that category has gone down in recent years, where the immediate urgent has gone up slightly. I absolutely agree that we could look at whether there is an op…”

“There was a change in the code of practice because there had been an error. The code of practice was not in line with the legislation. It has been returned to be in line with the legislation. I am struggling to find my bit of information now.”

“There are specified works, which are the things that need to be carried out under a permit. Those were agreed with HAUC following consultation. Works that must be carried out under a permit involve breaking up or resurfacing the road, closing the carriageway or reducing lanes on larger carriageways. The works that are …”

“Is that something you could comment on, Anthony?”

“In coming into the DfT, one of my concerns was in finding that a large number of fines, fees and charges had not been reviewed for a really long time. As you know, there has already been a consultation on increasing the penalties available with options to increase in line with inflation or to double. We decided to doub…”

“The fines are a bit of a backstop position.”

“That is not where we want to get to. There are fixed penalty notices for some offences, such as working without a permit, breaching a permit condition or late submission of start and stop notices. I would expect those to be implemented, if they are needed. They are not an alternative to engaging with utility companies …”

“We are doubling them. We will be able to look at whether that is effective. In terms of the overrun charges, £10,000 per day is significant.”

“We could consider other incentives that are performance-based. It would require legislation. We could consider not issuing utility companies with permits until they had fixed a particular long-standing issue.”

“I will have to go away and look at that one. I would anticipate that someone will have gone out to site and said, “Why do you not have your traffic management in place?”, and that would result in them putting their traffic management in place, especially if they have a fixed penalty notice. If that is routinely happeni…”