In our inexorable quest to travel from A to B, we demand and expect smooth unfaltering performance from our roads and highways. Problems such as potholes, excavations, temporary roadworks and collapsed ironwork only serve to hamper us. Congestion charges, Section 74 and HA104 have already, or are about to be, instigated and it would appear that wherever we look and whatever we read, everybody is talking about them. John Crowther, streetworks manager, Enterprise (Midlands, Wales and the south west) summed up the position when he commented: "When the secretary of state made the provision, by regulations, requiring an undertaker excavating streetworks in a maintainable highway to pay a charge to the Highway Authority, where the duration of the works exceeds a prescribed period, or where the works are not completed within a reasonable period, then utilities and their contractors had to reassess the existing planning and management of their works to meet the new requirement.
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