Boroughs ‘reluctant’ to use powers to restrain utility firms

23 January 2008

‘Only a handful’ of London boroughs could sign up to use new powers to rein in rogue utility companies, because of resource and funding issues, an advisory group has warned.

Under the Traffic Management Act 2004, which comes into effect in April, highways authorities can introduce permit based schemes for road and street works instead of relying on current ‘notification’ based approaches.

However, plans have to be submitted to the secretary of state for transport to be rubber stamped before authorities can put them into practice.

At a London Assembly Transport Committee meeting last week Helena Kakouratos, a member of the London Permit Scheme Working Group, said: ‘Not every local authority will take up permitting powers. It is not compulsory for them to do so and that is an issue.

‘You could be faced with the scenario that after April 1 only a handful of local authorities have put forward schemes for approval.’ ‘The feedback I’m getting is that an awful lot of London Boroughs will not be running permit schemes, certainly not with the initial wave.’

David Brown from Transport for London, which is also part of the working group, said: ‘I think a lot of local authorities haven’t really understood it and what permitting can do for them and they are frightened of the resources they are going to have to put in to set a scheme up. ‘What we are doing with the working group is to give them a template and explain what it means to them in terms of costs.’

Kakouratos told Surveyor after the meeting: ‘Authorities have a chicken and egg problem where they don’t have the money or resources – a particular problem due to the skills shortage – to set up a system, but if they don’t then they won’t be able to collect funds.’

She said the London Permit Scheme Working Group had come up with an informal framework to make it easier for highway authorities to apply, which was being circulated to London Boroughs to encourage take up. The framework, which includes consultation periods and notification periods to the Department for Transport, suggests it will be October before any schemes are in place.

Kakouratos and Brown also voiced concerns that highway authorities were still not being incentivised to prosecute rogue authorities because any money from a prosecution would go to the courts rather than the authority.

‘Should a utility choose not to pay a fine then it is up to the authority to prosecute at the courts, another costly and time consuming process,’ said Kakouratos. ‘If the issue was decriminalised then authorities would receive the money themselves, similar to the way in which parking fines work now.

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Boroughs ‘reluctant’ to use powers to restrain utility firms

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