Lane Rental Mission Creep Threatens UK Broadband Upgrades

Street Works UK, a Trade Association that represents utilities and their contractors on street works issues, has warned that mission creep in the Government’s new Lane Rental scheme is threatening to significantly increase the cost of deploying new broadband networks across England and Wales.

The Lane Rental Scheme, which was introduced over two years ago (here), works by allowing local authorities across England and Wales to charge utility companies by the hour for civil engineering work that causes significant disruption (traffic congestion etc.). The charges can be up to £2,500 for each day the roads are occupied by the works.

The idea is that such charges would reflect the costs of congestion caused by such works, and that in turn would encourage works promoters to: “reduce the length of time taken to carry out the works; improve planning, coordination and working methods; carry out more works outside of peak times; complete works to the required standard first time.”

Until recently the disruption to broadband deployments has been kept to a minimum, which is partly because Local Authority’s (LA) have taken a soft approach to such work. The scheme also excludes works on footpaths from Lane Rental charges (except if a footpath closure requires a safe route for pedestrians that impacts a carriageway directly) and some related works can even be scheduled around off-peak hours to avoid the charges.

However, Street Works UK warns that some LAs have now decided, despite the rules, to apply Lane Rental charges to public footpaths too. “We believe that potential scope creep of Lane Rental schemes around footpaths will lead to escalating costs for utilities and ultimately impact customers without reducing congestion one iota,” said the trade body.

Clive Bairsto, CEO of Street Works UK, said:

“Many will know that in the coming months and years, street works will be a vital enabler of the Government’s priorities around economic recovery, levelling up, and transitioning to net-zero. Infrastructure projects to help future-proof the UK economy, such as super-fast broadband and upgrades to the electricity networks to allow for increased electric car usage, will all require street works. That is because these pipes and wires mostly run quietly under our nation’s roads in a complex web of hidden connectivity.

As a result, poorly thought out Lane Rental schemes will add costs, skew well-thought-through plans, and obstruct in such a way that they could be a significant drag on upgrading Britain’s towns and cities, slowing down progress and adding additional unnecessary cost burdens.

DfT guidance must inform the roll-out of Lane Rental schemes in different areas. For example, local authorities should particularly ensure their schemes do not cover more than 5% of their road network focused on the most traffic sensitive roads as per the guidance-and backed up by clear data.”

We can appreciate the need for such a scheme to help tackle road congestion, although at the same time it’s vitally important that cash strapped local authorities don’t put up new obstacles to the rollout of full fibre and other broadband networks, particularly where street works are required.

Such work is already extremely expensive and if those costs increase then operators may be left with little choice but to scale-back or slow down their deployments. Meanwhile, Street Works UK are continuing efforts to try and overcome such concerns by working more closely with local authorities to “realise our shared ambition of upgrading essential infrastructure.”

It’s worth noting that the Government’s past guidance said they might only approve use of the scheme for local authorities when key conditions are met, which included ensuring that permit schemes fully support the delivery of national infrastructure projects (e.g. HS2 and the full fibre rollout). So far this still appears to be holding up.