Vicky Carr is a journalist turned writer who grew up in Harrogate and returned in her late 20s to raise her family here. Find her on Instagram @vickycarrwrites

It’s very simple. You get in your car, set off to wherever you need to be, and then find out how many sets of roadworks you get caught in.

Obviously, there’s no prize for just one set. If you find two, your reward is a bit of stress about whether you’re going to make it to wherever you’re going on time.

For three or more sets of roadworks, you can enjoy being late for work, the dentist or your kids’ football match. And if you make it to the dizzy heights of five – congratulations! You can give up, turn the car around and go back home (via the same five sets of roadworks that earned you the prize in the first place).

Just in case you’re thinking you can game the system, there are some fun hidden rules:

1. The location of roadworks can change on a daily basis. Hourly, in some cases.

2. The handy roadworks map on the North Yorkshire Council (NYC) may not bear any relation to what’s actually happening on the roads.

I’m having a bit of fun with this, of course. I’ve been held up taking my children to after-school clubs or meeting friends across town in the last few weeks. It’s annoying, but no worse than that.

However, it’s not a laughing matter when it starts to have a real impact on your life – or even your livelihood.

For small business owners across Harrogate and beyond, it’s much more than an inconvenience. Diversions, temporary traffic lights and road closures all have an impact on the fortunes of everything from shops and cafes to hairdressers, chiropractors and post offices.

Then there are community nurses and midwives, supermarket deliveries, bin lorries, school buses and all manner of other services whose efficiency is severely limited by having to sit in queues every time they try to reach patients and customers – and who do you think picks up the bill for all that wasted time?

North Yorkshire Council is introducing charges of up to £2,500 per day to utility companies for digging up main roads. It should encourage companies to work as quickly and efficiently as possible, only carrying out work that is essential. The proceeds will be used to administer the system and any leftovers put into reducing disruption on the roads.

But I hope you’ll forgive my cynicism when I say I don’t think this is going to be the panacea NYC is hoping.

It’s not just the contractors on the ground who are causing problems – there are systemic issues that won’t be solved by this new approach.

A few weeks ago, the owners of long-standing gift shop Shine told the Stray Ferret they were surprised to find a set of temporary lights outside their Kings Road premises. There had been no notification, which is usually standard, so the independent businesses along the road were unable to warn their customers or make adjustments to their staffing or opening hours to cut costs while footfall was down.

And the reason for the lack of warning?

The person at NYC whose job it is to tell businesses about roadworks was off work.

You couldn’t make it up! Dozens of staff are involved in planning and executing roadworks, both at the council and at the various companies and contractors who carry out work, yet the entire system falls at the final hurdle because one person doesn’t press ‘send’ before they take a day off.

When times are so tough on the high street, the last thing small businesses need is to be forced against their will into playing this kind of insane lottery. In their case, what’s at stake isn’t just a bit of inconvenience or a missed coffee date – it could be their entire livelihood. And when small businesses disappear as a result, we’re all the poorer for it.

But until NYC itself can get its act together and implement a system that doesn’t have this kind of single point of failure, we’re all doomed to win (or lose) the Harrogate Roadworks Lottery for the rest of our days.

What do you think? Please give us your opinion on the roadworks situation and how it impacts your life in the Comments Section below. We want to hear from you.