Derbyshire pushes for more say and less disruption in response to a national enquiry on utility roadworks

Derbyshire County Council has responded to a national Transport Committee Inquiry about managing the impact of utility companies roadworks as part of the council’s continuing drive to reduce both the disruption and lasting impact of utility works on the roads.

Every time a utility company, the companies who provide water, gas, electricity, phone, broadband and other digital services, want to dig up the road to get to their equipment they have to seek permission from the local highways agency. The council currently has limited powers to refuse permission. In Derbyshire around four in every five sets of roadworks are by one of the utility companies. 

Some utility company jobs are to fix broken pipes or cables and are deemed an emergency because the service they provide has stopped. Some jobs are to replace old equipment or install new equipment for new developments and are done in a more planned way.

The Transport Committee at the Houses of Parliament asked for views on how these roadworks could be better managed. 

Derbyshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Highways Assets and Transport, Councillor Charlotte Cupit, explained: “We’re pleased with this national inquiry as another opportunity in our ongoing campaign to reduce the impact of roadworks across Derbyshire.  

“We do understand that all our utility companies need to do works on our roads and pavements to get to their equipment, as we do all need water, electricity, gas and digital services. 

“But we all get frustrated when we’re stuck in temporary lights that aren’t being best timed, where we don’t know what the work is for (particularly if no one is on site!) or when we see the patchwork of trenches left behind. 

“Amongst the issues that we have raised with the Transport Committee is our request for a longer guarantee on the work they do, and we’d like more powers to be able to insist that some jobs undertaken mean that they then resurface the full width of the road, not just a small trench. These small trenches can often fail just after the warranty period, and a few years later weaken the road surface.

“We’d like more powers for our inspectors so they can do more spot checks on works as we’re currently quite limited to strict criteria.

“We’d also like greater powers to say no to work that is not an emergency, but where utilities want to work at peak times or at weekends. And we’d like the power to make utility companies work out of hours, at nights or quiet weekends and do better communications locally when they’re working in an area. 

“Another issue we have highlighted are the fines we can give to utility companies if their jobs take longer than they said they would. The level of the fines are not really much of a deterrent to large companies, so we are calling for the fines to be increased, as well as other potential deterrents such as the power to stop them working, and finally we are encouraging the coordination of the utility companies when they need to access the same piece of road in a short piece of time.

"This is mainly when new developments are being built and each utility company needs access. We can often have several road closures, which we know causes massive frustration, as one by one the utility companies appear to do what they need to do. This could possibly be coordinated through the planning process.”

“We do work well with the utility companies, and always do our best to coordinate work so that we take account of other jobs taking place at the same time close by, but we believe that with some fairly small changes we could make a big positive impact for residents and roads.”

A formal response has been submitted to the Transport Inquiry and the council will continue to raise local issues.