I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the regulation of roadworks; and for connected purposes.
I introduced a very similar ten-minute rule Bill in the previous parliamentary Session, which unfortunately ran out of time. However, under the heading of the “Can the Cones” campaign, I am now seeking to reintroduce similar legislation to help tackle the issue of overrunning roadworks head on.
One of the great frustrations of modern life is queuing for ages in a line of traffic, inching forwards to get through a set of contraflow traffic lights at the scene of some roadworks, only to then finally crawl past a large hole in the ground, heavily coned off, with absolutely no one working on the site. According to data highlighted by The Echo newspaper, recent freedom of information requests showed that during the 2021-22 financial year there were over 77,000 street and roadworks in my county of Essex, making it the most dug up county in Britain. But this is by no means an issue confined to Essex.
Last week, we had a debate in Westminster Hall on this same subject, ably secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking), who I am pleased to say is one of the sponsors of my Bill, which also has cross-party support. Last week’s debate was replied to by the Roads Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood). I am pleased to note that she is in her place on the Front Bench listening today, as she promised she would be. I thank the Minister for her courtesy.
Roadworks can take place for a variety of reasons. Sometimes utility companies are carrying out repairs or maintenance, broadband providers laying new fibre, or property developers connecting new estates to the grid. In many cases, however, the common denominator is a lack of any palpable sense of urgency whatever to get the job done, regardless of the inconvenience caused to the travelling public. As a constituency MP, I have received a growing tide of complaints about the spiralling frequency of roadworks in recent years, with the gas utility company Cadent being by far the worst serial offender. Last year, in one of my villages, Hockley, a perfect storm of the above three things occurred and led to so many concurrent roadworks that the exasperated villagers, led by a very proactive local councillor, Adrian Eves, resorted to nicknaming their village “Blockley”.
Given all that, the Bill essentially has three key aims. First, it would give local highways authorities, such as Essex county council, much stronger powers to control the granting of permits to anyone who wanted to dig up the highway network. This is a critical weakness in the current arrangements. Currently, highways authorities can only really refuse to grant a permit on safety grounds. If those applying for one deem the work to be an emergency, the authority’s ability to refuse is weaker still. And I am sad to report that people sometimes attempt to game the system. The Bill would allow refusal on the grounds of causing unacceptable disruption and would materially strengthen the hand of councils to negotiate much tighter conditions, including stricter deadlines when granting permits, so that companies would hopefully be prevented from overrunning in the first place.