Roadworks: Disruption

3. What recent steps he has taken with Cabinet colleagues to reduce disruption caused by roadworks.

10. What recent steps he has taken with Cabinet colleagues to reduce disruption caused by roadworks.

Roadworks are essential to ensure the safety and integrity of England’s highway network, and it is also essential that utility companies can install and repair the equipment on which we all rely. Some disruption is inevitable, but the Government have introduced several initiatives, such as Street Manager, to reduce that. Another tool, lane rental schemes, allows local highway authorities to charge works promoters for the time that street works and roadworks occupy the highway. Charges are focused on the very busiest streets at the busiest times, with the aim of reducing congestion.

The west midlands has great transport connectivity, but we are particularly vulnerable to congestion caused by roadworks. The works to replace the central barrier on a 7.5-mile stretch of the M42 are causing delays to my constituents and many others across the region. That work is clearly important, but it is vital that we minimise disruption. Please can the Minister outline what steps have been taken to ensure that these works are completed as soon as possible?

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. I was in the west midlands just a couple of weeks ago visiting the RAC just off the M42. The scheme between junctions 3 and 4 to replace the barrier will provide increased safety to drivers, which remains our top priority. Once completed, the new barrier will require significantly less maintenance and repair after incidents, which will further reduce disruption for her constituents. To minimise disruption, National Highways has endeavoured to keep all lanes open to traffic and is utilising the longer daytime hours and good weather to complete the works as quickly as possible for her constituents.

I thank the Minister for personally endorsing my “Can the cones” campaign and my associated Roadworks (Regulation) Bill, which has its Second Reading in November. One great frustration of modern life is spending ages crawling through a set of traffic lights at a contraflow to finally drive past a large hole in the road, immaculately coned off with no one doing any work on it. The Bill is designed to make it much more difficult for that to happen. Does the Minister have any good news at all that might help all of us in our constituencies to can the cones?

I thank my right hon. Friend for his excellent and continued work in this area, alongside his colleagues in Chelmsford, Southend and elsewhere in Essex. I am particularly pleased to see that he has already managed to persuade Essex County Council to move ahead with a lane rental scheme, and his regulatory reform suggestions are being considered by the Department. I hope to be able to update the House later in the year, because the progress that he has suggested is directly feeding into the Government’s general policy.