In his second annual report, John Gooday, the Scottish road works commissioner, said he would “not shirk” from imposing fines of up £50,000 on utility companies that did not comply with the required standards for repairing roads, noting that improvements over the two years had been “disappointing”.
The commissioner also said there had been a “poor” performance by some local authorities in informing about roadworks, despite legislation introduced last year forcing them to put up public notices about disruption.
Failure to use the correct materials when repairing road works or laying them at the wrong thickness led to 36% of inspected utility companies failing, the commissioner’s report found.
Among the major utility companies, Scottish Water was the worst performing, with around half its utility works not repaired properly.
The Herald revealed in June that Scotland’s 32 councils face a repair bill of between £1bn and £2bn for bringing the network of local roads up to scratch.
It is feared that the failure to repair utility works correctly will add to this bill as the roads will deteriorate more rapidly.
Mr Gooday, who took up the newly-created post of road works commissioner two years ago, said he had now established the criteria on which utility companies and roads authorities, including councils, would be expected to be judged but said there had been a “bedding-in” period over the last half of the 2008-9 financial year.
“During this bedding-in period the early indications are that there have been improvements in some areas, such as the quality of the information which the utility companies provide,” he said.
“However, in other areas, such as the placing of notices by roads authorities, the indications are that the performance of some authorities has been poor. Also, although results show that the quality of utility company reinstatements have improved slightly, this is not the step change improvement which I wish to see.”
Only six roads authorities had imposed fines on utility companies for failures to repair roads properly, to the value of £72,560.
The north and west of Scotland were found to have the worst problems with utility repairs: in North Ayrshire, only 40% were found to have met standards, while in
Glasgow 55% were up to scratch.
Cosla, the council umbrella organisation, was unavailable for comment last night. However, a spokesman for Scottish Water said the company carried out a “massive amount” of repairs to its assets on an ongoing basis.
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