Charge proposals left hanging

18 October 2006

The Department for Transport has left the door open to barring highway authorities from applying charges for overrunning street works to more lightly-trafficked streets, in a second consultation on the new street works regulations.
A compromise hammered out between highway authorities and utilities in a working group reconvened late last year would see £250 daily charges on category 3 and 4 roads, in exchange for halving the maximum overrun charge for category 1 roads to £2,500 (Surveyor, 23 February).
But while the working group’s recommendations have been included in the revised draft regulations, the consultation also asks for views on the alternative of only levying overrun charges on the busiest roads.
The document states that ‘there remains significant concern that the focus of Section 74 charges should continue to be the busiest streets’, and seeks views on how prompt completion of work could be secured without overrun charges.
This comes despite the overwhelming rejection of the February 2005 proposal to not allow charges on residential roads by local highway authorities.
Fearing a ‘two-tier’ network, where work drags out on category 3 and 4 roads, a total of 117 councils were against the idea and just six in favour.
The re-presentation of the proposal also comes despite the fact that, prior to the reconvening of the working group last year, ministers ‘had decided that Section 74 charges should apply to all works in the carriageway to deal with liveability issues’. Peter Goode, traffic manager at Nottinghamshire, who sat on the working group, said it appeared that the debate on the application of overrun charges had been ‘reopened’.
He hoped that the replacement of Section 74 charges, in abeyance following legal action from Transco, ‘dragging on for some time now’, would not suffer further delay. A spokesman for the DfT said the consultation proposal was the same as the working group’s, while the previous proposal of not applying overrun charges to category 3 and 4 roads had been included as ‘an alternative’.
The process was drawing to a close, he stressed. ‘It is intended to lay the regulations in early 2007.’

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