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28
Jun
Night works, banning road closures, lane rental… can anything ease Harrogate’s roadworks woe?
The news that the current rash of roadworks blighting the Harrogate district is likely to continue until spring or summer next year has sparked questions about what can be done to ease congestion.
After a brief hiatus for the Great Yorkshire Show from July 8 to 11, the cones and temporary traffic lights will return en masse.
Melisa Burnham, North Yorkshire Council’s area highways manager listed forthcoming schemes in an email to councillors this month.
Besides Northern Powergrid’s ongoing major project to upgrade the electricity network, there’s the Harrogate Spring Water pipeline project, highways work to facilitate the new Tesco supermarket on Skipton Road and month-long works on Knaresborough Road.
Work on Victoria Avenue should have finished now.
York Place will be dug up again and the Victoria Avenue active travel scheme, which should have finished, is running late. Details of scheduled schemes are available here.
Permit fees
The Stray Ferret’s revelation that Harrogate Spring Water is paying the council just £600 for a permit to conduct long-term roadworks raised eyebrows.
In emails discussing roadworks between councillors and council officers, seen by the Stray Ferret, Councillor Matt Walker, a Liberal Democrat who represents Knaresborough West, asked the council for details of how much other companies currently pay for permits. He also asked whether the council was considering business relief discounts for shops affected.
Cllr Walker said:
I can totally understand why the residents are raising concerns. It’s taken me over an hour to get to Harrogate from Knaresborough and an hour back. I saw very little activity from any work people doing any work. Why can’t the work be done overnight to cause minimum disruption? This seems to be commonplace in Europe and other countries.
Frustrated shop staff on Leeds Road, which has been badly affected by roadworks.
Allan McVeigh, the council’s head of network strategy, replied to say permit fees were charged according to the type of road and activity and ranged from £22 to £200 per permit per street. Overrun charges can vary from £250 to £10,000 per day.
Lane rental
The council has applied to the government to introduce a lane rental scheme which would give it the power to charge £2,500 a day to companies carrying out work. This could increase income and encourage utilities companies to finish jobs quickly.
Ms Burnham has also indicated the council wants to introduce Section 58a restrictions under the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991. This would prevent roads being dug up for six months except for emergencies. The restrictions would be introduced on key routes into Harrogate by late spring or early summer when most current utility works have been completed.
Despite these measures Cllr Michael Harrison, a Conservative who represents Killinghall, Hampsthwaite and Saltergate, warned there were no easy answers. He said there was no legal mechanism to financially compensate for the impact of roadworks and that overnight roadworks were difficult to enforce. He said:
We can only insist on overnight works when it is justifiable. It has to be practical to reopen a road outside of the work time or else what is the point, and the cost to the company forced to work overnight is significant so it is not a direction that the council can make lightly. There is also an impact on residents who need to sleep so I don’t think you can assume that it would be welcomed.
The A59 at New Park, where work to build the access road for Tesco will start in August.
Karl Battersby, the council’s corporate director of environment agreed with Cllr Harrison and said the lane rental scheme would allow it to charge a much higher fee for roadworks and act as an “incentive for utility companies to better co-ordinate works and get them done quickly”.
He added: “We are hopeful the scheme will be approved later this year. Our street works inspectors do regularly monitor works and compliance with the permits.”
In the meantime, it seems motorists will need to keep their cool in the summer heat when they encounter the myriad of roadworks around the district.
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