Roadworks: Journey Times

Lewis Cocking Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of roadworks on journey times.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I declare an interest as a Hertfordshire county councillor. I am pleased to have secured this debate on a very important topic for my constituents. When I describe the constituency of Broxbourne to those who are not familiar with it, I often say that it is a collection of places without a dominant centre. Instead, many of the towns and villages that make up Broxbourne are connected by two main roads: the A10 and the high street, or the old A1170, which extends from Waltham Cross in the south to Hoddesdon in the north. Demand on those roads, as the main arteries between the residential and urban areas, is extremely high. If works are taking place at any location on our roads, the traffic standstill can affect almost the entirety of Broxbourne. That is a serious problem and, frustratingly, one that is not often discussed.

According to INRIX, a transportation data analytics company, the average driver in the UK lost 61 hours to traffic congestion last year alone—four hours more than the 2022 figure. Those delays are costing UK drivers on average £558 each. Staggeringly, that means that the cost of traffic delays to the country overall is an eye-watering £7.5 billion—yes, £7.5 billion. People wanting to enjoy their hard-earned cash are unable to spend as much time as they would wish at local shops. Small business owners and traders struggle to make appointments on time. The less time people have to earn or spend, the harder it is for our country and economy to grow. The Chancellor said today that economic growth will be her mission for this Parliament, so I hope the Government will recognise that point.

The economic cost is especially damaging in the constituency of Broxbourne, where more people use a car or van to get to work than the national average. Hundreds of my constituents have completed my survey to share their experiences of the roadworks and how they affect them locally. They have made it extremely clear how disruptive long waits in traffic caused by roadworks are to their daily lives. I have heard about delays in reaching elderly parents, carers finding it difficult to carry out their vital duties and children missing out on the start of the school day. It is not just car journeys; for many of my constituents, the bus service is a lifeline, and when roadworks have left our local roads gridlocked, buses are inevitably delayed. Pensioners in my constituency have told me that they have simply given up even trying to go out. The knock-on effects of missing serious medical appointments and of social isolation are obvious.

My constituents’ anger and frustration are made even worse by the fact that so often when they drive past roadworks, no one is working on them—and it can be the case that no one is working on them for days, or even weeks. We are told that the problem is urgent and the barriers and traffic lights are in place as an emergency measure, but can it really be an emergency if no workers are on site for such long periods of time? My constituents feel that there has to be a way for the vital work to be carried out quicker and more logically. Local authorities and utility companies must communicate much better between themselves to co-ordinate works in a sensible and cost-effective way. It cannot be right that the same stretch of road is dug up time and again, sometimes by different companies, but sometimes by the same company. Those organisations have to improve how they communicate with the public. It should be easier to find out why disruption is taking place and exactly how long it will be for. We cannot let it be the case, as my constituents have experienced, that residents wake up to find a four-way traffic light diversion in place, making it even harder to leave their house, get to school and go to work. We should use technology much better and come up with innovative ways to avoid static traffic where we can.

Here is an example. Someone drives up to a four-way traffic light, which is on the main road, but there is a side street with a few houses. All the lights will go green and red in sequence. We should be able to use technology so that the light only goes green down the cul-de-sac when a car is waiting to go. That is a small change that would make roadworks a lot easier for my constituents and others across the country to move about.

I welcome the fact that the previous Government set out plans for drivers and consulted on several policies to make it easier for everyone to use our roads. That included helping local authorities to establish lane rental schemes. Those schemes allow a highway authority to charge up to £2,500 per day for works on the busiest roads at the busiest times, with charges applying only to works carried out by utility companies and highway authorities.

The cost incentives to those organisations to move their works and carry them out at less busy times, or engage in joint working with others, are obvious. Around 95% of charges are avoided by taking those steps, meaning that disruption for drivers is minimised, without additional costs being placed on them by the firms responsible. Just four schemes are currently in operation, covering less than 10% of the road network in London and counties in the south of England.

Expanding those schemes across the country would raise significant funds for local authorities. As the previous Government proposed, at least 50%—I would suggest 100%—of the surplus funds should be directed to the repair of potholes, so that drivers can benefit from smoother journeys. I urge the Minister to publish the findings of that consultation, which closed on 11 March 2024, and introduce those measures.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. In the previous Parliament, I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill about the regulation of roadworks, which I am reintroducing next week. I am honoured to say my hon. Friend has agreed to be a sponsor, as has the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith). Does my hon. Friend agree that a key element is the handing-out of permits by highway authorities, which I am trying to tighten up on? If we could tighten that up, we could help to prevent many of the overruns that my hon. Friend so eloquently described.

[Lewis Cocking]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. There is a problem with a highway authority issuing permits. There is also a problem when utility companies use emergency legislation, where they do not even have to notify the highway authority of the works taking place. Residents can wake up, get in their car to go to work or school, drive to the end of their road and see the road being dug up, without any communication having been made with them.

We need to take a two-pronged approach. I am happy to support my right hon. Friend’s ten-minute rule Bill, to tighten up some of the regulation on this. We need to ensure that highway authorities are responsible when they issue permits. We also need to ensure that, when utility companies use that emergency legislation, they get someone working on site as quickly as possible to get that emergency fixed. Do not dig up a road, under claims of an emergency, put traffic lights in place and then allow our constituents to sit in traffic for hours on end while no one works on that site.

I am pleased to support my right hon. Friend and his Bill, which will include increasing the fixed-penalty notices for utility companies whose roadworks overrun, which is another important issue. As I have said, the threat of financial penalties for those undertaking these works can make a difference, so penalties for work that overruns should be increased in line with inflation, especially for regular offenders. I have said before that sometimes when the same stretch of road is dug up, it is dug up by different utilities. If those utilities worked together, it would save them money. It is absolutely extraordinary—and there are examples of this in my constituency—that the same utility company digs up the same stretch of road, virtually at the same point, just a couple of weeks after they finished digging it up. They really need to forward-plan and look at how they do such work.

These changes, along with lots of others, would bring down costs for consumers, so that we could spend our money where we want to in the economy and get to work or school on time. I hope that the Government will listen and take the side of my constituents and many ordinary working people across the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lewis Cocking]

I thank the Minister for her reply and thank all the hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. I also thank the hundreds of my constituents who replied to my survey online to tell me about their experiences.

I will make a few final points. We really need to tackle the emergency works. As I said, they turn up unannounced. Most of our constituents can understand that if there is a real emergency, we should get the works done as quickly as possible, but when roads are dug up by utilities, which is quite often the case under emergency legislation, and residents drive past day after day and see no one working on the site, it is a real frustration. I will not repeat the language that I use when I am in the car by myself and I see that occurring in my constituency. Even worse than that, we drive past cones and traffic lights, but there will not even be a hole dug in the road—so not only have we had no one working on the site, but works have not even been started, even though cones have been put out what seems like weeks before, which causes disruption and makes people sit in traffic.

As for planned works, because lots of organisations are involved, sometimes the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. It is like someone sat down and said, “We want to plan all these works all at the same time, so that you cannot move anywhere around the local area”. We really need to get better at planning all those works through the highways authority and the utility companies, particularly for emergency works. If we want to unlock economic growth in this country and get the economy growing at a really rapid speed, we will do that by keeping Britain moving.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the impact of roadworks on journey times.