Agenda item

Report of the Director of City Services and Commercial

The Cabinet Member for City Services considered a report of the Director of City Services and Commercial on the Coventry City Council Street and Roadwork Permit Scheme, following an independent review of the Scheme’s performance. Appendices to the report provided: the Coventry City Council Permit Scheme Year 9 Service Evaluation Report; the Service Priorities Action Plan 2025 – 2027; and an Overview of Proposed Changes to the WaSP Scheme Document.

The Coventry Permit Scheme was the mechanism used by the Council to co-ordinate the effective delivery of road and street works within the city. The overall aim being to minimise disruption and enable essential works to maintain and upgrade the highways network and those assets located within.

The Permit Scheme had been in operation for 9 years and had been largely successful in improving how and when works that could cause disruption and inconvenience to users of the highway, were undertaken.

To ensure that the scheme was operating effectively and continued to meet its original objectives, an independent review of the Scheme’s performance had been undertaken. The report that the review generated was contained in Appendix A to the report.

The report showed that the Scheme had grown significantly since its inception, with both the operating costs and income generated through the scheme having more than doubled since year 1. Whilst the increase in operating costs had raised consistently year on year, the income generated by the Scheme had fluctuated year on year more significantly as programmes of works are rolled out across the city. The impact of an acceleration in work programmes associated with a reduction in network usage during covid could be seen to have contributed to the scheme having generated a small overall surplus over the first 9 years of operation. Whilst the Scheme had generated a surplus it was noted that there would be a need to closely monitor operating costs and income generation in future years and adjust permit fee charges accordingly to ensure that the Scheme could continue to operate on a cost neutral basis. Overall, the report showed that the Scheme continued to meet its original objectives and delivers value with a calculated Benefit to Cost Ration of 2.35:1.

Through the report, several recommendations had been made to improve service performance over the next three years and these were set out in Appendix B to the report.

The report also set out the results of a consultation undertaken with stakeholders regarding minor administrative changes to the Permit Scheme which had been necessitated by changes in legislation, including the introduction of the new centralised DfT Street Manager System which replaced the previous Electronic Transfer of Notice (EtoN) System. These changes were intended to keep the Scheme up to date, reflecting new regulations or statutory guidance (particularly the use of new technology requirements) whilst removing reference to old guidance that had been superseded and was summarised in Appendix C of the report.

RESOLVED that the Cabinet Member for City Services:

1)  Endorses the contents of the report and the Coventry City Council Street and Roadwork Permit Scheme Year 9 Service Evaluation Report as set out in Appendix A to the report.

2)  Approves that the performance data for year 9 of the Scheme should be submitted to the Department for Transport in accordance with the requirements of the Permit Schemes: Statutory guidance for highway Schemes.

3)  Approves the associated Service Action Plan as set out in Appendix B to the report.

4)  Notes the results of the consultation on proposed changes to the Permit Scheme considering recent changes in legislation and approve the making of the appropriate order to implement Version 1.6 of the WaSP Scheme.

5)  Agree to receive a further update report after completion of the Permits Scheme’s 12th year, (2026-27) unless there was a material change in the performance of the service, in accordance with legislation.