DfT to avoid regulatory-intense approach

12 March 2008

The Department for Transport will seek a less ‘regulatory-intense’ approach to combating congestion in future, given the ‘complex, costly, time-consuming and energy-sapping’ process of producing regulations to control street works.

Richard Buckley, the DfT’s divisional director for traffic management, this week told a traffic management conference: ‘We need to regulate in a less heavy-handed way in future.

Street works are the single most highly-regulated area in the whole of transport policy. ‘Why do other things work without regulation? We don’t regulate traffic incidents in the same complex way.’

He wanted to know: ‘Where can the DfT add value?’ Buckley acknowledged the drive to implement the Traffic Management Act over the last five years meant it had been distracted from other work, such as joining-up with policy agendas, and promoting best practice.

He regretted having ‘to get into commercially-sensitive areas’ such as the impact of the regulations on the bottom line of utility companies. In future, the department would, instead, push for ‘more non-regulatory agreements’ and ‘partnership agreements’.

There was ‘a need to take the temperature down in these adversarial relationships’ between highway authorities and utilities.

But Mark Kemp, chair of the national traffic managers forum, said: ‘We need regulation where there are competing objectives. Utility companies’ main objective is to serve their customers. Without regulation, that would continue to be the case.’

Regulation was not as necessary in areas without competing objectives, he added. When managing the traffic impact of planned events, such as football matches, for instance, ‘it’s in the organisers’ interests to work with us’.

Buckley, speaking at the Institution of Highways and Transportation spring conference, promised consultations in 2008 on introducing civil bus lane and moving traffic offences outside London, and better powers for inspecting street works and the specification for reinstatements. However, he could ‘not give a precise date’ on when the Section 74 overrunning charges regulations would be finalised.

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