Road Adoption

9. What steps his Department is taking to expedite road adoption.

My Department is working closely with the Department for Transport to consider reforms to adoption and highways frameworks. We also recently consulted on reducing the prevalence of private estate management arrangements, including proposals to increase the adoption of estate amenities such as roads on new developments. That consultation closed on 12 March and we are analysing the feedback received.

Residents in Fossett Grove have been battling for 10 years for the adoption of a piece of land that is strewn with litter. Elsewhere in my constituency, roads are not gritted during the winter months, in Bidwell West we have an area where they cannot get a post box and, where a car crashed into a house, we cannot get any speed humps. What can the Minister do to put pressure on the council to hurry up?

Those cases sound particularly egregious, and I am sorry to hear about them. My hon. Friend is right to highlight the detrimental consequences of declining road adoption rates. The Department for Transport is reviewing barriers to adoption, with a view to identifying improvements and informing future reforms, alongside the consultation that I referenced. When it comes to individual local authorities, to put it mildly, some are better than others—we know that—and Central Bedfordshire obviously has some ground to make up. That is one of the issues we are considering as part of the policy development process in respect of that consultation.

In my constituency, we have to deal with increasing numbers of unadopted roads, either because the developer wants to leave the road with an estate manager, which means an annual charge, or because the road does not meet the construction standard to satisfy the local highways department. Both issues are ripe for the exploitation of residents. Will the Minister consider issuing guidance to control those abuses?

We will do better than that. As part of our consultation on ending the prevalence of those arrangements, we specifically consulted on what more we can do on common adoptable standards, and we are exploring mandatory adoption for certain public amenities in certain circumstances. If the hon. Gentleman has read the Competition and Markets Authority report into the issue, he will know that the two are essential; we cannot mandate local authorities until we have common adoptable standards. If that is the route we go down, we have to do them at the same time.