Highways chief says contractors would rather pay fines over roadworks breaches

Utility companies would rather “do and be damned” and accept council fines for roadworks, Derbyshire’s Highways Chief has said.

Chris Henning, executive director of place – which includes highways – at Derbyshire County Council made the comments during a scrutiny meeting on road issues.

Cllr Carol Hart said the council needed to ensure utility companies carried out “full-width” pavement and road repairs instead of patches of replacement tarmac.

She said in her division, the county council re-laid a pavement, and two weeks later it was excavated by a utility company, which then replaced a strip of material.

Cllr Hart said: “We need to insist on better repairs.”

Cllr Alex Millward said utility companies were causing “unsightly messes” with their roadwork patch repairs.

Cllr Mark Chambers said: “Yes, they need to resurface it if they carry out some works a month after [a repair].”

Currently, utility companies—responsible for essential gas, water, electricity, and telecoms infrastructure can be fined by local councils when planned works exceed their permitted timelines, for defective works, working without a permit, or failure to comply with roadworks permit conditions.

These fines can reach £5,000 per day for the first three days of overrunning works and £10,000 per day from day four onwards.

Planned changes to roadworks fines would carry these fines over into weekends.

The measures could double fines from £500 up to a maximum of £1,000 for companies that breach conditions of the job, such as working without a permit.

Mr Henning said: “The fines have a limit in favour of developers, they are very permissive to utility companies.

“There is an incentive to do and be damned. The fines are just a few hundred pounds.

“I don’t deny it, we can probably get better at this. We need to make use of our powers.

“We are a much better highways service than we were two or three years ago and we will be better in two more years. It is now fit for purpose and it wasn’t four years ago.”