Session 2008/2009

Ninth Report

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE

Report on Road
Openings by Utilities

Together with the Minutes of Proceedings of the Committee
relating to the Report and the Minutes of Evidence

Ordered by The Public Accounts Committee to be printed 26 February 2009
Report: 33/08/09R (Public Accounts Committee)

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Membership and Powers

The Public Accounts Committee is a Standing Committee established in accordance with Standing Orders under Section 60(3) of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. It is the statutory function of the Public Accounts Committee to consider the accounts and reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General laid before the Assembly.

The Public Accounts Committee is appointed under Assembly Standing Order No. 51 of the Standing Orders for the Northern Ireland Assembly. It has the power to send for persons, papers and records and to report from time to time. Neither the Chairperson nor Deputy Chairperson of the Committee shall be a member of the same political party as the Minister of Finance and Personnel or of any junior minister appointed to the Department of Finance and Personnel.

The Committee has 11 members including a Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson and a quorum of 5.

The membership of the Committee since 9 May 2007 has been as follows:

Mr Paul Maskey*** (Chairperson)
Mr Roy Beggs (Deputy Chairperson)

Mr Thomas Burns** Mr Trevor Lunn
Mr Jonathan Craig Mr Mitchel McLaughlin
Mr John Dallat Ms Dawn Purvis
Mr George Robinson**** Mr Jim Wells*
Mr Jim Shannon*****

* Mr Mickey Brady replaced Mr Willie Clarke on 1 October 2007

* Mr Ian McCrea replaced Mr Mickey Brady on 21 January 2008

* Mr Jim Wells replaced Mr Ian McCrea on 26 May 2008

** Mr Thomas Burns replaced Mr Patsy McGlone on 4 March 2008

*** Mr Paul Maskey replaced Mr John O’Dowd on 20 May 2008

**** Mr George Robinson replaced Mr Simon Hamilton on 15 September 2008

***** Mr Jim Shannon replaced Mr David Hilditch on 15 September 2008

List of abbreviations used in the Report

List of Abbreviations used
in the Report

NISRANs Northern Ireland Streetworks Register and Notification System

GB Great Britain

C&AG Comptroller and Auditor General

DRD Department for Regional Development

DSD Department for Social Development

Executive Summary

Introduction

1. The Northern Ireland road network is a major public asset below which runs a complicated network of pipes and cables delivering key services to local residents and businesses. Utilities have statutory rights to lay their equipment under the public roads network and there were approximately 35,000 such road openings in 2006-07. The previous Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee took evidence on this subject and its report, published in April 2002, made a number of recommendations to improve performance.

2. The Committee places great store in the commitments given by departments in Memoranda of Reply and expects such commitments to be implemented in full. It is a very long time since the Committee’s initial report in 2002 and there is no doubt that the Committee was led to expect that progress would not be so long delayed. It is very unsatisfactory that there are many areas where actions have not fully measured up to what was promised. The Accounting Officer failed to assure members that utilities were bearing their full share of the costs of reinstatement and it is not acceptable that the taxpayers are currently left to pick up the bill for poor reinstatement of street works by utilities.

Improving consultation and minimising disruption

3. The Department has statutory powers to co-ordinate street works and to commit utilities to minimising disruption from road openings. However the Committee is very concerned by evidence of a lack of consultation and the high-handed and lax approach to complying with established procedures. Particularly in the current economic climate, this is unacceptable and more must be done by Roads Service to police utilities’ actions and ensure better engagement with those affected by street works.

4. It is not clear to the Committee how information on customer complaints and measures of satisfaction in this area is analysed. Nor is clear how feedback from written correspondence of this nature is used to help deliver improved performance. In no area of government that this Committee has investigated to date, have members been so aware of such an immense gulf between officials’ views of what they are achieving and the perception of the public and elected representatives. Roads Service needs to understand that the cost of having to escalate complaints through elected representatives to get recognition is disproportionate and represents a very real cost to wider society.

5. Roads Service has a computerised register of street works – the Northern Ireland Streetworks Register and Notification System (NISRANS) - and utilities have a statutory requirement to notify all planned road openings well in advance on the register. However, there continues to be a pattern of late notifications, particularly by NI Water. This is an unacceptable situation and Roads Service’s complacency about the extent of late notifications raises serious doubts about the accuracy and reliability of the NISRANS system. It is not at all clear that Roads Service has the ability to monitor this situation effectively.

6. Failure to notify street works in advance on NISRANS is an offence and utilities can be fined up to £1,000. However, there has never been a utility prosecuted for late or non-notification. This failure to fine even a single utility for late or non-notification sends entirely the wrong message and creates a climate in which the legislation has no practical deterrent effect. It cannot be right that repeated instances of late or non-notification go unpunished.

Reinstating roads to the required standard

7. It is clear that there has been an improvement in the quality of reinstatement over recent years and while this is welcome it is important that the improvement is sustained and built upon. Reinstating road surfaces should not be inherently difficult. A 10% failure rate should not be challenging, and indeed the Roads Service should be thinking of moving beyond it.

8. A specific concern in terms of poor quality reinstatement relates to high amenity town centre areas where tarmacadam, or other materials which are different to the original high quality paving, have been used to repair the surface. During the evidence session, the Committee highlighted the specific case of Castle Lane. This unsightly patchwork will have been in place for almost two full years prior to its permanent reinstatement. It is completely unacceptable that an important pedestrian thoroughfare of this nature could be left in this state for such a long period and this case reflects poorly on the respective departments, highlighting poor project management and a lack of joined-up service delivery.

9. The effect of utilities’ work on rural roads is also a matter of particular concern to the Committee. Members cited examples where, as a consequence of deep trenching, the cores of such small roads collapsed and were destroyed. Roads Service needs to be particularly sensitive to the impact of openings which destroy rural roads in this manner. At a time of great scarcity of resources, it should do all in its powers to recover the cost of damages or make sure utilities bear the full reinstatement burden.

10. NI Water is by far the largest utility in terms of street works. Although its reinstatement performance has improved, it remains well outside the 10% coring defect target and is the worst performing of all the utilities. The Committee is very concerned that the Department has taken so long to get to grips with its performance. In this context, it is important to maintain closer oversight and to drive forward further improvements.

11. Where faulty reinstatements are discovered, Roads Service should identify the utility responsible and ensure it carries out the necessary remedial work. However there is an alarmingly low follow-up rate of such defects. Deficiencies in Roads Service’s computerised notification system, NISRANS, have undermined its ability to track those utilities who had not responded to the notified defects. The low level of follow-up on inspection defects to date is unacceptable and sends entirely the wrong message to utilities. It is important that the new NISRANS, scheduled to be in place in the middle of 2009, provides appropriate reports that will prompt action in this area.

Operating a robust and effective reporting regime

12. The Department has powers to inspect, investigate and report on utilities’ reinstatement performance. There are three inspection categories, each of which should be subject to a 10% sample inspection. However there is a significant degree of under-sampling in respect of Category A inspections. The Committee was told this under-sampling is largely due to high levels of road openings undertaken on an emergency or urgent basis and the Committee is concerned about abuse of the emergency and urgent notification classification by utilities as a means of avoiding inspections.

13. Under the Inspection Code of Practice, Roads Service can issue an Improvement Notice where more than 10% of a utility’s sample inspection results reveal a reinstatement defect or inadequacies in the signing, lighting and guarding of the street works. Roads Service indicated that it had made a conscious decision not to use the process outlined in the Code because it was too bureaucratic and time-consuming. While recognising that overall performance standards have improved, there is a concern about the relationship between utilities and Roads Service. In the absence of robust action by Roads Service, it is missing the opportunity to make an example of utilities whose sample inspection results are persistently missing the 10% threshold.

14. The Inspection Code of Practice advises that the Department should publish an annual summary of utilities’ performance. At the previous Public Accounts Committee hearing, the then Accounting Officer gave a specific commitment to meet this requirement. Despite this, there has been no published report of this nature to date. Putting performance information into the public domain is a pre-requisite for holding utilities to account. The failure of Roads Service to fulfil the Accounting Officer’s commitment to the previous Public Accounts Committee is a particularly blatant breach of a very firm undertaking, for which there is no excuse.

Summary of Recommendations

1. Acceptance of Public Accounts Committee recommendations in a Memorandum of Reply places a significant obligation on departments. In this case, the monitoring mechanisms failed to identify that not all recommendations had been implemented in full or in a timely manner. The Committee recommends that the Accounting Officer must satisfy himself that the arrangements he now has in place will ensure this does not happen again. (see paragraph 10)

2. The Department and Roads Service should not be bound inextricably to timescales in Great Britain. It is now clear that it may be well into 2010 before a new Code of Practice will be agreed in GB and it is only then the Department will put in place necessary legislation which could improve utilities’ performance. The Committee believes that Roads Service should be leading good practice in this area and recommends that it establishes new, interim arrangements, if necessary on a pilot basis, in advance of the GB Code. (see paragraph 12)

Improving consultation and minimising disruption

3. Utilities are expected to consult with local residents and businesses and take action to ameliorate negative impacts where possible. In many cases, this does not appear to be happening effectively. The Committee recommends that Roads Service periodically consults businesses affected by ongoing road works and seeks feedback from them to ensure their views have been taken into account and whether utilities have sought to offset the negative effects as far as possible. (see paragraph 15)

4. Complaints from the public and the views of elected representatives are a key barometer of service delivery. The Committee recommends that such information is collated, analysed and responded to in a systematic manner and reported to senior management of the Roads Service. (see paragraph 22)

5. The lack of co-ordination experienced by elected representatives in their constituencies may be indicative of a deeper-rooted problem within an engineering-led organisation such as Roads Service. The Committee recommends that the Agency appoints a senior manager to completely review the customer interface with its stakeholders and the public and to develop and implement an action plan to improve external relationships. If Roads Service lacks the necessary customer relations skills in-house, the Department should consider an outside appointment to strengthen the senior management team. (see paragraph 23)

6. The high levels of late notifications, particularly by NI Water, are unacceptable and the system for reporting them is not transparent. The Committee recommends that Roads Service ensures its new NISRANS system can accurately identify late notifications and that these are monitored and reported on regularly. (see paragraph 27)

7. Roads Service is due to secure new powers to enable it to impose Fixed Penalty Notices for late or non-notification. The Committee recommends that after careful forewarning these powers are enforced rigorously and would like a report from Roads Service on the number and value of Fixed Penalty Notices imposed in the first full year after they become operational. However, in the interim, the Committee recommends that Roads Service use the available legislation to prosecute utilities for repeated late notifications.
(see paragraph 30)

Reinstating roads to the required standard

8. The Department signed up to an ultimate aim of reducing the coring failure rate to 10%. It is disappointing that, 7 years later, this has still not been achieved. The Committee recommends that Roads Service sets a specific timeframe within which this 10% target is to be met. (see paragraph 34)

9. Roads Service has a clear responsibility to ensure that high amenity surfaces in town centres are properly reinstated to the required standard first time and not left for years in a state of temporary repair. The Committee recommends that specific monitoring arrangements are put in place to track the quality of reinstatement in such areas. Where temporary reinstatements are appropriate, action should be taken to reinstate to the required standards within a reasonable, pre-determined timescale. (see paragraph 40)

10. Minor rural roads are inherently more vulnerable to damage from road openings and maintaining their structure is of vital importance to the local communities they serve. When its new legislation comes into force, the Committee recommends that Roads Service takes robust action to ensure that utilities carry out half-width or, preferably, full-width reinstatements as required to ensure the integrity of rural roads is maintained in full. (see paragraph 43)

11. The recent and planned developments outlined by the Accounting Officer in relation to NI Water are welcome, but late. While the Committee is pleased to note the improvements over recent years, it is not acceptable that a Government-owned Company should be the worst performing utility in terms of the quality of reinstatement. The Committee recommends that the recently-introduced senior management meetings between the Department, Roads Service and NI Water are used to establish specific actions for improving reinstatement performance and holding NI Water to account. (see paragraph 47)

12. The low level of follow-up on inspection defects to date is unacceptable and sends entirely the wrong message to utilities – that if they fail to issue a warranty notice or to put right a defect, they will not be pursued. When Roads Service’s inspection activities identify reinstatement defects, these must be addressed. The Committee recommends that Roads Service adopts a more pro-active approach to following-up reinstatement defects, and uses its new NISRANS system to accurately track utilities which have not remedied such defects. (see paragraph 51)

Operating a Robust and Effective Reporting Regime

13. A high incidence of emergency and urgent works impinges on Roads Service’s ability to co-ordinate street works and to undertake its inspection process and NI Water contributes disproportionately to this issue. The Committee recommends that Roads Service undertakes a risk-based sample check on all utilities’ notifications to ensure they are fully complying with the Code of Practice classification and that there is no abuse of the notification system. (see paragraph 56)

14. The Committee expects utilities to achieve the 10% threshold established in the Inspection Code of Practice. Where the partnership approach preferred by Roads Service does not result in utilities meeting the 10% rate, the Committee recommends that Roads Service deals with such utilities robustly and transparently by making use of Improvement Notices. (see paragraph 60)

15. Roads Service collects a range of performance information but has not formally published the results. Open and transparent reporting is a pre-requisite in increasing public accountability. The Committee recommends that the Department implements the performance measurement recommendations made at paragraph 3.24 of the C&AG’s report. This includes publication of an annual summary of utilities’ sample inspection performance results as recommended by the Inspection Code of Practice and the Committee wishes to receive a copy as soon as it is published. (see paragraph 64)

Introduction

1. The Public Accounts Committee met on 22 January 2009 to consider the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (C&AG’s) report “Road Openings by Utilities: Follow-up to Recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee".

2. The witnesses were:

Mr Paul Priestly, Accounting Officer, Department for Regional Development;
Mr Geoff Allister, Chief Executive, Roads Service;
Dr Andrew Murray, Director of Network Services, Roads Service;
Mr David Thomson, Treasury Officer of Accounts; and
Mr John Dowdall CB, Comptroller and Auditor General.

3. The Northern Ireland road network is a major public asset below which runs a complicated network of pipes and cables delivering key services to local residents and businesses. Utilities have statutory rights to lay their equipment under the public roads network and there were approximately 35,000 such road openings in 2006-07. If these are not reinstated to the required standard, the service life of carriageways and footpaths can be reduced. Furthermore, street works can result in considerable disruption and traffic congestion to residents, businesses and road users.

4. In November 2001, the previous Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee took evidence on this subject and its report, published in April 2002, made a number of recommendations to improve performance. In taking evidence on the C&AG’s follow-up to the previous Public Accounts Committee report, the Committee focused on the extent to which the Department and Roads Service are:

co-ordinating street works to minimise the disruption caused;
improving the standards of reinstatement by utilities; and
operating a robust and effective inspection and reporting regime.

Opening remarks

5. The Committee places great store in the commitments given by departments in Memoranda of Reply and expects such commitments to be implemented in full. While the Department has achieved a great deal in certain areas, there are many others in which its actions have not come up to the mark.

6. It is reassuring to note the Accounting Officer’s acknowledgement that he takes all Public Accounts Committee recommendations very seriously and recognises their significant contribution to improving the framework of internal control and ensuring value for money for the taxpayer. In this respect, he outlined a series of measures in place to monitor implementation.

7. However, it is a very long time since the Committee’s initial report in 2002. Looking back at the tone of the earlier hearing, there is no doubt that the Committee was led to expect that progress would not be so long delayed. It is very unsatisfactory that there are many areas where actions have not fully measured up to what was promised. In view of this, the Committee wishes to make it clear that it intends to revisit this area to assess progress.

8. On several occasions, the witnesses tried to use the argument that deficiencies in performance were due to lack of resources. However, as emphasised by the Chairperson, whether the funding is £1 or £1 billion, the Committee is here to see that the Department is delivering value for money. Indeed, the harsh reality of limited resources reinforces the role of this Committee in scrutinising the extent to which departments are delivering services with due regard to the taxpayer.

9. Moreover, the Committee would be more sympathetic to this line of argument if the Accounting Officer had assured members that utilities were bearing their full share of the costs of reinstatement and his Department was maximising revenues from fines and other penalties. However, Roads Service has no basis for quantifying what utilities are costing in terms of damage to the infrastructure or the cost of traffic delays. Consequently, it is limited in its ability to recoup the respective costs. While the Committee recognises that estimation of such costs is complex, it is not acceptable that the taxpayers are currently left to pick up the bill for poor reinstatement of street works by utilities and more needs to be done to expedite this matter.

Recommendation 1

10. Acceptance of Public Accounts Committee recommendations in a Memorandum of Reply places a significant obligation on departments. In this case, the monitoring mechanisms failed to identify that not all recommendations had been implemented in full or in a timely manner. The Committee recommends that the Accounting Officer must satisfy himself that the arrangements he now has in place will ensure this does not happen again.

11. A common thread running through the evidence session, related to the need to await developments in GB, for example, to estimate the damage and congestion costs associated with utilities’ road openings. With a devolved local administration the Committee is not persuaded that this is a tenable line to take and would like to see legislation introduced sooner rather than later.

Recommendation 2

12. The Department and Roads Service should not be bound inextricably to timescales in Great Britain. It is now clear that it may be well into 2010 before a new Code of Practice will be agreed in GB and it is only then the Department will put in place necessary legislation which could improve utilities’ performance. The Committee believes that Roads Service should be leading good practice in this area and recommends that it establishes new, interim arrangements, if necessary on a pilot basis, in advance of the GB Code.

Improving consultation and
minimising disruption

Inadequate consultation

13. The Department has statutory powers to co-ordinate street works and to commit utilities to minimising disruption from road openings. In the current economic downturn, the Committee is strongly of the view that an important element of this duty relates to timely and comprehensive consultation with local businesses. This need is reinforced by the fact that businesses have no right of compensation for any loss of trade and earnings caused by utilities’ road openings.

14. The Department and Roads Service gave assurances that their normal, well-established procedures ensured consultation with local stakeholders. The scheme’s promoters are responsible for undertaking the necessary public consultation and utilities are expected to advertise the scheme publicly well in advance; enter into discussions with the various local stakeholders; and seek to ameliorate any negative impacts that may occur.

15. Despite these arrangements, Committee members were able to offer numerous examples in their constituencies where utilities had opened roads without sufficiently engaging local businesses. Members provided several illustrations where streets had been dug up without consultation, traders had not been informed in advance of the scheme, access to shops was severely restricted and shopkeepers had lost a great deal of trade. The Committee is very concerned by this evidence of lack of consultation and the high-handed and lax approach to complying with the established procedures. Particularly in the current economic climate, this is unacceptable and more must be done by Roads Service to police utilities’ actions and ensure better engagement with those affected by street works.

Recommendation 3

16. Utilities are expected to consult with local residents and businesses and take action to ameliorate negative impacts where possible. In many cases, this does not appear to be happening effectively. The Committee recommends that Roads Service periodically consults businesses affected by ongoing road works and seeks feedback from them to ensure their views have been taken into account and whether utilities have sought to offset the negative effects as far as possible.

17. The Committee has noted the Roads Service’s explanation on the concerns arsing from the handling of the summer 2008 sewer replacement scheme on Main Street, Ballykelly. Another period of disruption is now imminent as Roads Service intends to undertake a major resurfacing scheme on the same street. Repeated street works, whether by utilities or Roads Service, have the potential to cause major disruption to local traders. It is therefore important these are properly co-ordinated to minimise the total duration of the road openings. This second project in Main Street, Ballykelly is an opportunity for Roads Service to demonstrate its effectiveness in consulting and accommodating local interests.

Managing customer relations

18. Following the previous Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee hearing, Roads Service had commissioned attitude surveys on the work done by utilities. Although these highlighted increasing levels of dissatisfaction with road openings, Roads Service decided that this feedback confirmed views of which it was already aware. As a consequence, it discontinued the surveys.

19. The Committee was therefore interested in how Roads Service currently collates information on customer complaints and satisfaction levels and the extent to which feedback had been given in order to improve services. Roads Service confirmed that, while it has a customer satisfaction survey, road openings by utilities is not one of the issues covered. Nevertheless, the Chief Executive assured the Committee that he knew exactly the views of stakeholders on this subject, given the correspondence he regularly received.

20. It was not at all clear to the Committee, however, how such information is analysed and whether it feeds formally into measures of complaints and customer satisfaction. Nor is it clear how feedback from written complaints of this nature is used to help deliver improved performance.

21. In no area of government that this Committee has investigated to date, have members been so aware of such an immense gulf between officials’ views of what they are achieving and the perception of the public and elected representatives. It would be fair to say that Committee members are exasperated at the frustrating experience of dealing with Roads Service on complaints about openings. Roads Service needs to understand that the cost of having to escalate complaints through elected representatives to get recognition is disproportionate and represents a very real cost to wider society.

Recommendation 4

22. Complaints from the public and the views of elected representatives are a key barometer of service delivery. The Committee recommends that such information is collated, analysed and responded to in a systematic manner and reported to senior management of the Roads Service.

Recommendation 5

23. The lack of co-ordination experienced by elected representatives in their constituencies may be indicative of a deeper-rooted problem within an engineering-led organisation such as Roads Service. The Committee recommends that the Agency appoints a senior manager to completely review the customer interface with its stakeholders and the public and to develop and implement an action plan to improve external relationships. If Roads Service lacks the necessary customer relations skills in-house, the Department should consider an outside appointment to strengthen the senior management team.

The need for timely notification of street works

24. Roads Service has a computerised register of street works (NISRANS) and utilities have a statutory requirement to notify all planned road openings well in advance on the register. In the past, there have been large scale failures, particularly by the former Water Service (now NI Water), in notifying on a timely basis.

25. The Department accepts that this was unsatisfactory and acknowledged that the onus was on it to improve the situation. It asserted that a great deal of work had been done in this regard. Subsequent written evidence provided to the Committee, however, indicates that there has continued to be a pattern of late notifications by NI Water.

26. This is an unacceptable situation and Roads Service’s complacency about the extent of late notifications raises serious doubts about the accuracy and reliability of the NISRANS system. The Committee is not convinced that Roads Service has the ability to monitor late notifications effectively. It is particularly unsatisfactory that such a large proportion of late notifications should be caused by NI Water, a Government-owned Company.

Recommendation 6

27. The high levels of late notifications, particularly by NI Water, are unacceptable and the system for reporting them is not transparent. The Committee recommends that Roads Service ensures its new NISRANS system can accurately identify late notifications and that these are monitored and reported on regularly.

28. Failure to notify street works in advance on NISRANS is an offence and utilities can be fined up to £1,000. There has never been a utility prosecuted for late or non-notification since the Street Works Order was introduced in 1995. Roads Service indicated that the Magistrate’s Courts prefer to see late or non-notification matters settled between Roads Service and the utilities without being brought to court. It told the Committee that it focuses on more serious offences and on which it has brought 17 prosecutions.

29. However the failure to fine even a single utility sends entirely the wrong message and creates a climate in which the legislation has no practical deterrent effect. It cannot be right that repeated instances of late or non-notification go unpunished and that NI Water in particular appears willing to flout the statutory requirements on a recurrent basis.

Recommendation 7

30. Roads Service is due to secure new powers to enable it to impose Fixed Penalty Notices for late or non-notification. The Committee recommends that after careful forewarning these powers are enforced rigorously and would like a report from Roads Service on the number and value of Fixed Penalty Notices imposed in the first full year after they become operational. However, in the interim, the Committee recommends that Roads Service use the available legislation to prosecute utilities for repeated late notifications.

Reinstating roads to the
required standard

Continuing to improve overall standards of reinstatement

31. At the time of the previous Public Accounts Committee hearing, the quality of reinstatement carried out by utilities was unacceptable and the Department indicated its ultimate aim was to reduce its coring failure rate to 10%.

32. The Department told the Committee that its performance was better than in Great Britain and that it expects further improvements in the future, but that achieving a 10% target failure rate represents a high bar to get over.

33. While the Committee recognises and welcomes the extent of performance improvements achieved to date, it is important that these are sustained and built upon. Reinstating road surfaces should not be inherently difficult and, despite the Accounting Officer’s assertion, a 10% failure rate should not be challenging and indeed, the Roads Service should be thinking of moving beyond it.

Recommendation 8

34. The Department signed up to an ultimate aim of reducing the coring failure rate to 10%. It is disappointing that, 7 years later, this has still not been achieved. The Committee recommends that Roads Service sets a specific timeframe within which this 10% target is to be met.

High amenity town centres

35. Castle Lane
A specific concern in terms of poor quality reinstatement relates to high amenity town centre areas. Members have experienced many instances where tarmacadam, or other materials which are different to the original high quality paving, have been used to repair the surface.

36. During the evidence session, the Committee highlighted the specific case of Castle Lane and was informed that its current state was due to an understanding that the Department for Social Development (DSD) was to re-pave the whole area. Hence, the surface in place was only temporary. The Committee was sceptical about the definition of ‘temporary’ and therefore asked for a written submission from the Accounting Officer to provide more details on this scheme.

37. In this submission, the Accounting Officer explained that DSD notified the various utilities in April 2006 that they were examining the possibility of carrying out Public Realm works in this area and Castle Lane had been scheduled into the works programme for August 2008. The utilities commenced what is termed “pre-proofing" of their systems to assess whether the condition of their services would last the life expectancy of the new public realm scheme. The first pre-proofing notification on NISRANS which resulted in a temporary reinstatement in Castle Lane was notified by NI Water in April 2007. Due to slower progress on other streets, the Castle Lane works were delayed and commenced on 12 January 2009. The project is scheduled for completion by September/ October 2009.

38. In effect, therefore, this unsightly patchwork will have been in place for almost two full years prior to the commencement of the public realm works by DSD. It is completely unacceptable that an important pedestrian thoroughfare of this nature could be left in this state for such a long period. Moreover, the Committee noted that, although the witnesses had evidently prepared their defence on this case, they did not have the basic information available on the length of time Castle Lane had been in this state. This case reflects poorly on the respective departments, highlighting poor project management and a lack of joined-up service delivery. Because of this, the responsible utilities have escaped lightly, having been allowed to reinstate surfaces at low cost, using materials which are inferior to the originals.

39. Roads Service has no specific arrangements for inspecting high amenity town centre surfaces that have experienced recent road openings, but instead they are inspected through its normal random sample inspection process. In view of their visibility and importance to town centres, the Committee is of the view that such areas should get special treatment.

Recommendation 9

40. Roads Service has a clear responsibility to ensure that high amenity surfaces in town centres are properly reinstated to the required standard first time and not left for years in a state of temporary repair. The Committee recommends that specific monitoring arrangements are put in place to track the quality of reinstatement in such areas. Where temporary reinstatements are appropriate, action should be taken to reinstate to the required standards within a reasonable, pre-determined timescale.

Small rural roads

41. The effect of utilities’ work on rural roads is also a matter of particular concern to the Committee. Members cited examples where such roads had stood many years of use but, as a consequence of deep trenching, the cores of these small roads collapsed and were destroyed. There are additional negative impacts arising where utilities divert traffic in rural areas to roads not built to accommodate heavy goods and related vehicles. Members’ experience was that such roads can deteriorate very quickly.

42. The Roads Service noted that, if a scheme promoter causes a road to be subjected to abnormal traffic, it can recover some costs through negotiation with the utility. It also noted that new legislation has been proposed which will create the requirement for utilities to resurface entire lane widths or contribute to the costs of carrying out the works. In the Committee’s view, Roads Service needs to be particularly sensitive to the impact of openings which destroy rural roads in this manner. At a time of great scarcity of resources, it should do all in its power to recover the cost of damages or make sure utilities bear the full reinstatement burden.

Recommendation 10

43. Minor rural roads are inherently more vulnerable to damage from road openings and maintaining their structure is of vital importance to the local communities they serve. When its new legislation comes into force, the Committee recommends that Roads Service takes robust action to ensure that utilities carry out half-width or, preferably, full-width reinstatements as required to ensure the integrity of rural roads is maintained in full.

Improving the performance of NI Water

44. NI Water is by far the largest utility in terms of street works. Although its reinstatement performance has improved since the previous Public Accounts Committee hearing, its latest coring failure rate of 19% remains well outside the 10% target and is the worst performing of all the utilities. The Committee is very concerned that the Department has taken so long to get to grips with its performance, particularly as it falls within the Accounting Officer’s control to a much greater extent than the private sector.

45. The Accounting Officer assured the Committee that NI Water had taken notice of its poor performance. The company had delivered an Action Plan to Roads Service in December 2008, setting out measures to improve its coring results. Furthermore, the Department has now established, at a senior management level, a series of meetings between the Department, Roads Service and NI Water which address a range of issues, including street works. He considered that the company was on a path to improvement and looked forward to further advances in the near future. Equally, he was adamant that it would be wrong to single out NI Water as its performance did not lag significantly behind other utilities.

46. In the Committee’s view, however, it is entirely appropriate to focus on a Government-owned Company for particular scrutiny. Its performance has consistently lagged behind the targets. Precisely for the reasons given by the Accounting Officer – the huge challenges facing the organisation, the high levels of emergency and urgent works which it undertakes and the huge capital investment programme it has in place – it is particularly important to maintain closer oversight of performance and to drive forward further improvements.

Recommendation 11

47. The recent and planned developments outlined by the Accounting Officer in relation to NI Water are welcome, but late. While the Committee is pleased to note the improvements over recent years, it is not acceptable that a Government-owned Company should be the worst performing utility in terms of the quality of reinstatement. The Committee recommends that the recently introduced senior management meetings between the Department, Roads Service and NI Water are used to establish specific actions for improving reinstatement performance and holding NI Water to account.

Follow-up of reinstatement defects

48. Where faulty reinstatements are discovered, Roads Service should make strenuous efforts to identify the utility responsible and ensure it carries out the necessary remedial work. However there is an alarmingly low follow-up rate of such defects. In 2006-07, only 6% of defects identified in its sample inspection activities had been followed up by Roads Service.

49. Although Roads Service notifies utilities of the defects identified by its inspection process, in some cases the utilities were not issuing the requisite warranty notices (i.e. to signify their acceptance of the notified defect). A utility remains responsible for a defect until it has notified Roads Service of the completion of the repair and the utility must then guarantee its work for a further two years. Roads Service received legal advice which indicated that they should not carry out any remedial work on outstanding warranties since the responsibility and liability for the defects lies with the utility. However, the Committee was assured that, if a defect was at a stage where it was liable to be a serious safety defect (in excess of 50mm), Roads Service would take appropriate action.

50. In addition, deficiencies in Roads Service’s computerised notification system, NISRANS, have undermined its ability to track those utilities who had not responded to the notified defects. Roads Service indicated that it had taken steps since the C&AG’s report was published to improve the system and to better track defects. A new NISRANS is scheduled to be in place in the middle of 2009 and this should provide reports that will prompt action in this area.

Recommendation 12

51. The low level of follow-up on inspection defects to date is unacceptable and sends entirely the wrong message to utilities – that if they fail to issue a warranty notice or to put right a defect, they will not be pursued. When Roads Service’s inspection activities identify reinstatement defects, these must be addressed. The Committee recommends that Roads Service adopts a more pro-active approach to following-up reinstatement defects, and uses its new NISRANS system to accurately track utilities which have not remedied such defects.

Operating a robust and effective
reporting regime

Increasing the number of Category A inspections

52. The Department has powers to inspect, investigate and report on utilities’ reinstatement performance. In support of the legislation, an Inspection Code of Practice sets out specific procedures for undertaking sample inspection activities. There are three inspection categories, each of which should be subject to a 10% sample inspection. However, the level of sample inspection actually undertaken is at variance with the Code and there is a significant degree of under-sampling in respect of Category A inspections.

53. Category A inspections are particularly important for two reasons. First, it is the only opportunity to inspect the street works while the road is opened to ensure the quality of backfill materials and their compaction. Second, it is a key health and safety check to gauge if there is appropriate signing, lighting and guarding of the works.

54. The Committee was told that under-sampling within Category A was largely due to high levels of road openings undertaken on an emergency or urgent basis. Roads Service claimed that performance in this regard had improved over time and it has introduced new procedures whereby its inspectors can inspect works which they come across during their other activities.

55. NI Water has a particularly high rate of emergency and urgent notifications. The Committee was concerned about abuse of the emergency and urgent notification classification as a means of avoiding inspections. Roads Service acknowledged that it had concerns about this issue and it therefore could not assure the Committee that the system was not being abused. This had been raised with NI Water in the past at divisional level. However, it was pointed out that the nature of NI Water’s work is different than that of other utilities because it has an old network and much of its work is driven by the need to respond to burst water mains and sewer collapses. The Accounting Officer noted that NI Water had rearranged its operations directorate, with operations staff now involved in street works notification.

Recommendation 13

56. A high incidence of emergency and urgent works impinges on Roads Service’s ability to co-ordinate street works and to undertake its inspection process and NI Water contributes disproportionately to this issue. The Committee recommends that Roads Service undertakes a risk-based sample check on all utilities’ notifications to ensure they are fully complying with the Code of Practice classification and that there is no abuse of the notification system.

Issuing improvement notices

57. Under the Inspection Code of Practice, Roads Service has the power to issue an Improvement Notice where, over a three month period, more than 10% of a utility’s sample inspection results reveal a reinstatement defect or inadequacies in the signing, lighting and guarding of the street works. Roads Service could have issued 79 Improvement Notices since 2002-03, but had decided not to exercise this option.

58. Roads Service indicated that it had made a conscious decision not to use the process outlined in the Code because it was too bureaucratic and time-consuming. Instead, it had used informal discussions as the first option to identify problems and thereafter held interviews of concern with utilities. Its focus was on co-operation, co-ordination and working in partnership with the utilities. It told the Committee that this was a more effective means of addressing performance issues and has produced tangible results as evidenced by a lower rate of reinstatement defects. Roads Service also added that the view in Great Britain was that the practice of issuing improvement notices will be abandoned. Despite its preference for a partnership-based approach, the Department assured the Committee that it would not shy away from taking robust legal action where it was considered necessary.

59. While recognising that overall performance standards have improved, the Committee is concerned about the relationship between utilities and Roads Service risks. Where problems occur, they must be dealt with robustly and transparently, by full implementation of the Code of Practice for example via the use of Improvement Plans to address poor performance where this is considered the most appropriate way of dealing with the utility. In the absence of robust action by Roads Service, it is missing the opportunity to make an example of utilities whose sample inspection results are persistently missing the 10% threshold.

Recommendation 14

60. The Committee expects utilities to achieve the 10% threshold established in the Inspection Code of Practice. Where the partnership approach preferred by Roads Service does not result in utilities meeting the 10% rate, the Committee recommends that Roads Service deals with such utilities robustly and transparently by making use of Improvement Notices.

Performance monitoring and reporting

61. The Inspection Code of Practice advises that the Department should publish an annual summary of utilities’ performance. This should include a specific section showing the results of its sample inspection for each of the three specific categories. At the previous Public Accounts Committee hearing, the then Accounting Officer gave a specific commitment to meet this requirement. Despite this, there has been no published report of this nature to date. Roads Service recognised that it could do more in regard to publishing reports and indicated that the introduction of a new NISRANS system will provide better reporting facilities.

62. Putting performance information into the public domain is a pre-requisite for holding utilities to account and for measuring how well Roads Service is managing its obligation to ensure that utilities reinstate road openings to the required standards. The failure of Roads Service to fulfil the Accounting Officer’s commitment to the previous Public Accounts Committee is a particularly blatant breach of a very firm undertaking, for which there is no excuse.

63. Since 2004, Roads Service has separately reported on six indicators in its Annual Report and Accounts. However these indicators are somewhat limited in nature and there is scope to improve performance measurement. The C&AG’s report made 5 specific recommendations in this regard. Roads Service indicated that it found these recommendations to be positive, although it wished to give further consideration to the specific recommendation to formally benchmark the performance of Divisions and Section Offices.

Recommendation 15

64. Roads Service collects a range of performance information but has not formally published the results. Open and transparent reporting is a pre-requisite in increasing public accountability. The Committee recommends that the Department implements the performance measurement recommendations made at paragraph 3.24 of the C&AG’s report. This includes publication of an annual summary of utilities’ sample inspection performance results as recommended by the Inspection Code of Practice and the Committee wishes to receive a copy as soon as it is published.

Minutes of Proceedings
of the Committee Relating
to the Report

Thursday, 22 January 2009
Senate Chamber, Parliament Buildings

Present: Mr Paul Maskey (Chairperson)
Mr Roy Beggs (Deputy Chairperson)
Mr Jonathan Craig
Mr Trevor Lunn
Mr Mitchel McLaughlin
Ms Dawn Purvis
Mr George Robinson
Mr Jim Shannon
Mr Jim Wells

In Attendance: Ms Alison Ross (Assembly Clerk)
Mrs Gillian Lewis (Assistant Assembly Clerk)
Mr John Lunny (Clerical Supervisor)
Mr Darren Weir (Clerical Officer)

Apologies: Mr Thomas Burns
Mr John Dallat

The meeting opened at 2.02pm in public session.

The Chairperson welcomed Mr John Dowdall CB, Comptroller and Auditor General, and Mr David Thomson, Treasury Officer of Accounts (TOA) to the meeting.

3. Evidence on the NIAO Report ‘Road Openings by Utilities: Follow-up to Recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee’.

The Committee took oral evidence on the NIAO report ‘Road Openings by Utilities: Follow-up Recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee’ from Mr Paul Priestly, Accounting Officer, Department for Regional Development (DRD), Mr Geoff Allister, Chief Executive, Roads Service, DRD, and Dr Andrew Murray, Director of Network Services, Road Service, DRD.

The witnesses answered a number of questions put by the Committee.

Members requested that the witnesses should provide additional information to the Clerk on some issues raised as a result of the evidence session.

4.17pm The evidence session finished and the witnesses left the meeting.

[EXTRACT]

Thursday, 26 February 2009
Room 144, Parliament Buildings

Present: Mr Paul Maskey (Chairperson)
Mr Roy Beggs (Deputy Chairperson)
Mr Jonathan Craig
Mr John Dallat
Mr Mitchel McLaughlin
Mr George Robinson
Mr Jim Shannon

In Attendance: Ms Alison Ross (Assembly Clerk)
Mrs Gillian Lewis (Assistant Assembly Clerk)
Mr John Lunny (Clerical Supervisor)
Mr Darren Weir (Clerical Officer)

Apologies: Mr Trevor Lunn
Mr Dawn Purvis
Mr Jim Wells

The meeting opened at 2.01pm in public session.

2.30pm The meeting went into closed session.

6. Consideration of the Committee’s Draft Report on Road Openings by Utilities: Follow-up to Recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee.

Members considered the draft report paragraph by paragraph.

The Committee considered the main body of the report.

Paragraphs 1 – 6 read and agreed.

Paragraph 7 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraphs 8 – 10 read and agreed.

Paragraphs 11 – 13 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraph 14 read and agreed.

Paragraphs 15 and 16 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraphs 17 – 19 read and agreed.

Paragraphs 20 – 22 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraph 23 read and agreed.

Paragraph 24 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraph 25 read and agreed.

Paragraph 26 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraphs 27 – 29 read and agreed.

3.02pm Mr Dallat left the meeting.

Paragraphs 30 – 31 read, amended and agreed.

3.12pm Mr Dallat rejoined the meeting.

Paragraphs 32 and 33 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraphs 34 – 37 read and agreed.

Paragraphs 38 and 39 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraphs 40 – 42 read and agreed.

3.21pm Mr Craig left the meeting.

Paragraph 43 read, amended and agreed.

3.25pm Mr Craig rejoined the meeting.

Paragraphs 44 – 47 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraph 48 read and agreed.

Paragraph 49 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraphs 50 – 53 read and agreed.

Paragraphs 54 – 56 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraphs 57 and 58 read and agreed.

Paragraph 59 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraphs 60 and 61 read and agreed.

Paragraph 62 read amended, and agreed.

Paragraphs 63 and 64 read and agreed.

The Committee considered the Executive Summary.

Paragraph 1 read and agreed.

Paragraph 2 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraph 3 read and agreed.

Paragraphs 4 and 5 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraph 6 read and agreed.

Paragraphs 7 and 8 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraph 9 read and agreed.

Paragraph 10 read, amended and agreed.

Paragraph 11 read and agreed.

Paragraphs 12 – 14 read, amended and agreed.

Agreed: Members ordered the report to be printed.

Agreed: Members agreed that the Chairperson’s letters to the Accounting Officer, Department for Regional Development, together with the responses from the Accounting Officer, Department for Regional Development and the Chief Executive, Roads Service, will also be included in the Committee’s report.

Agreed: Members agreed the report would be embargoed until 00.01am on Thursday, 19 March 2009.

Agreed: Members agreed that the Clerk should seek advice from the Press Office regarding publicity for the launch of the report, and bring proposals to the next meeting.

[EXTRACT]

Appendix 2

Minutes of Evidence

22 January 2009

Members present for all or part of the proceedings:
Mr Paul Maskey (Chairperson)
Mr Roy Beggs (Deputy Chairperson)
Mr Jonathan Craig
Mr Trevor Lunn
Mr Mitchel McLaughlin
Ms Dawn Purvis
Mr George Robinson
Mr Jim Shannon
Mr Jim Wells

Witnesses:

Mr Geoff Allister
Dr Andrew Murray
Mr Paul Priestly

Department for Regional Development

Also in attendance:

Mr John Dowdall CB		Comptroller and Auditor General
Mr David Thomson		Treasury Officer of Accounts

1. The Chairperson (Mr P Maskey): Today’s evidence session will focus on the Audit Office report ‘Road Openings by Utilities: Follow-up to Recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee’. Today we are joined by Mr Paul Priestly, accounting officer in the Department for Regional Development (DRD); Mr Geoff Allister, the chief executive of Roads Service in DRD, and Dr Andrew Murray, the director of network services in Roads Service in DRD. You are all very welcome.

2. I know that the Committee wishes to cover a lot of ground today, so with that in mind, I ask that witnesses’ responses are to the point, although they should obviously not compromise any of the evidence provided. The report that we are considering is the first follow-up study on recommendations that were made in a report by a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in a previous mandate. This is therefore an important opportunity for us all to see how effectively the Department and Roads Service have been implementing the recommendations that our predecessors made in 2002. The Department and Roads Service play a very important role to play in managing and controlling all aspects of utilities and activity on street works, and we are interested in seeing how they have performed in that role.

3. Mr Priestly, I ask you to please introduce your two colleagues.

4. Mr Paul Priestly (Department for Regional Development): I am accompanied by Mr Geoff Allister, who is the chief executive of Roads Service, and Dr Andrew Murray, the director of network services in Roads Service. Dr Murray is also the Northern Ireland chairman of the Institution of Highways and Transportation (IHT), a learned society that focuses on roads and transport issues across the UK.

5. The Chairperson: Thank you, Mr Priestly. I will ask a couple of questions, after which other members will have an opportunity to speak to you. The Public Accounts Committee of a previous Assembly took evidence from the Department for Regional Development on the subject of road openings by utilities back in November 2001. It appears from the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report that the Department has achieved a great deal in certain areas, and we must recognise that fact.

6. There are many areas, however, in which the Department’s actions have not fully come up to the mark, as was promised in the past. I will be interested to know what steps you, as the accounting officer for DRD, have taken and will take in future.

7. Mr Priestly: First, before answering your specific question, I wish to put on record that the Department welcomes the Northern Ireland Audit Office’s follow-up report. As you acknowledged, the report recognises that there has been a significant improvement in the management of road openings by utilities and in the performance of utilities in reinstating road surfaces following the completion of their work. I welcome that.

8. Several key issues have contributed to those improvements, including those in our computer system, the Northern Ireland Street Works Register and Notification System (NISRANS), which has enhanced communication and the flow of information between Roads Service and various utilities. The utilities’ performance in opening roads and reinstating them is now reported to senior management in Roads Service and the respective utilities. Traffic-management plans are now much more effective, and that has helped to reduce disruption and delays to road users and has improved environmental performance. It is also worth mentioning that new contractual arrangements and the use of modern technology, especially trenchless technology for laying pipes and so on, have led to improved contractor performance.

9. As you said, Chairperson, we must also acknowledge that there is more work to be done. We are now planning a new and enhanced NISRANS that will further increase our ability to oversee and regulate road openings by utilities. We hope that that will be launched later this year. We are also planning new regulations for the implementation of the proposals that are contained in The Street Works (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 2007, which again, will enhance the powers of the Department to manage and regulate the activities in question.

10. Chairperson, I will now turn back to your question about what I personally have done — and do — to ensure that PAC and Audit Office recommendations are implemented. First, I assure you and the Committee that the Department takes any recommendations that are made by our internal audit unit, the Audit Office or the PAC very seriously. We acknowledge up front that they contribute significantly in helping us to improve the framework of internal control and to ensure value for money for the taxpayer.

11. The Department monitors the implementation of all those recommendations on a quarterly basis and reports its findings to the departmental audit committee. It focuses on any recommendations that have not been implemented, paying particular attention to any that remain outstanding 12 months after the publication of a PAC report. In addition, the Department provides the Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP) with an annual update on progress in implementing the commitments that we have given in response to PAC reports in DFP memoranda of reply.

12. Finally, as part of the process of preparing the Department’s annual statement on internal control, staff at grade 7 level in the Department must provide me with an assurance that they are complying with follow-up action in audit reports and management letters.

13. I met representatives of Northern Ireland Water (NIW) on a number of occasions to discuss its performance, which has been particularly criticised in the report. They acknowledged the need to improve performance.

14. We set up a forum at senior-management level between the Department and NIW. The chairman and acting chief executive of NIW and I attended the forum’s first meeting, which focused specifically on operational issues between Roads Service and NIW. One of the issues that we discussed was the Northern Ireland Audit Office report and what progress was being made in the implementation of the recommendations. I discussed that report and my appearance before the Committee with the chairman and acting chief executive of NIW as recently as Tuesday evening. I went over with him what NIW is doing to improve its performance.

15. I hope that that gives the Committee a general insight into how we manage PAC reports and the implementation of any recommendations in the Department, as well as what I, as the accounting officer, have done to follow up on this report.

16. The Chairperson: I appreciate that, but even as late as yesterday, I dealt with an issue in Beechmount Avenue in my constituency, where people who were working for your Department dug up the street without having consulted any businesses or householders in the area. People could not access or even open up their own businesses, and when they were finally able to open them, customers could not access the shops or offices there. That issue must be addressed, and the Department needs to come back to the Committee with some recommendations.

17. It is wrong — particularly in the current economic downturn — that business people cannot even open their premises and that there was no consultation. Furthermore, the Department must be informed that after the roadworks were completed, the area was not cleaned up. The mess in the street is absolutely pathetic. The Department must address that massive issue when working through this process.

18. Mr Priestly: First, I cannot comment on the specific case that you mentioned, but I acknowledge your point. In ordinary circumstances, if it will affect local businesses, schools and so on, there should be consultation with local communities about plans to open roads. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that there is a category of road openings to deal with emergency or urgent situations.

19. The Chairperson: This was not an emergency situation; it involved street lighting. The problem must be addressed.

20. Mr Geoff Allister (Department for Regional Development): First, I do not know the details of that case, but the scenario that you have outlined runs contrary to our normal and well-established practices. Whether it is a street-lighting or resurfacing scheme that is being carried out, our instructions to our people and to contractors who work for us are very clear: they must discuss with frontagers, whether they are business owners or householders, when work will start. In this case, I will take a note and ask the relevant divisional roads manager to follow the matter up.

21. The Chairperson: I appreciate that.

22. Paragraph 1.2 of the report states that the Roads Service has no basis as yet to quantify what damage utilities are doing to the road infrastructure or the cost of traffic delays caused by street opening by utilities. If you are not aware of such costs, how can you be sure that you are managing road openings to deliver value for money?

23. Mr Allister: That is a particularly difficult area. First, given that the structure of the road is inevitably going to be weakened, it does not matter how well reinstatements are carried out. Even the best-quality reinstatement is still going to lead to some weakening of the road surface. That is likely to lead us to resurface sooner than expected.

24. The whole issue is the subject of ongoing research by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), which is a body of experts in this field, and the former County Surveyors’ Society, now CSS. They have been working on that subject for some time now, and regrettably, the outcome of that work has been inconclusive. The first stage of that work has been completed, and we had hoped that, by now, it would be definitive and would give us a model through which we could estimate the costs. They have been unable to do that. The Department for Transport has commissioned further research on the matter.

25. I will outline some of the difficult issues. Roads wear out over time, and several factors are involved. There is the whole issue of environmental deterioration through weathering, traffic volumes, and particularly the load that heavy goods vehicles place on roads.

26. All roads have different structures, and there are various types of roads in Northern Ireland, some of which were designed and built, for example, motorways. However, the majority of our network was never built, and its foundations vary from bog to rock. Roads are built using different materials. Some are built using bitmac, concrete or stone, so it is difficult to assess reinstatement damage, but we will follow up on the Department for Transport research.

27. Maintaining an underground network of services, which we have right across Northern Ireland beneath the road network, will always result in traffic delays. Therefore, even if the services are well managed, there will still be traffic delays. The issue for us is to ensure that the additional costs of poorly managed road openings are minimised. It is difficult to get a handle on the additional costs, because most of the road openings are in urban areas, and most of our urban roads are either at — or above — their traffic capacity. We see examples of that every day in towns and cities across Northern Ireland.

28. Traffic has been growing annually at a rate of about 3%, but traffic capacity and network capacity has not been growing at anything like that rate. Therefore, it would be extremely difficult for someone to analyse how much congestion over and above normal levels a particular road opening had caused. To give you some understanding of the extent of that difficulty, I shall mention a study that was carried out in England in 2004 on behalf of the road authorities. It estimated that the annual cost of delay in England in 2002-03 was £4·36 billion. The utilities did not like that, so they challenged that figure, and they carried out their own research using different methodology and came back with a figure of £1 billion. I have no idea whether the figure is £1 billion or £4·36 billion, but it is a big number nonetheless. Until we get some sort of model that will allow us to do some work here, it will be very difficult for us to create a model for and understand the financial consequences.

29. The Chairperson: The Committee is obviously looking for value for money. Among other things, your Department is responsible for roads, traffic congestion and digging up roads. Can you assure us that we are getting value for money with the system regarding less traffic congestion and roads being dug up, which obviously causes tailbacks?

30. Mr Allister: I am satisfied that we are making every effort to minimise the costs of traffic congestion that roadworks cause and the disruption and damage that reinstatements cause to the network. The Northern Ireland Audit Office report states that there have been significant improvements in reinstatement standards as illustrated by coring performance and the numbers of defects that have been found during sample inspections. Therefore, that indicates that there has been increased value for money and better performance over the years since the publication of the previous PAC report on the matter and since the previous PAC hearing.

31. The Chairperson: Paragraph 1.2 states clearly that you cannot give us an idea of the costs involved. When will you be able to do that?

32. Mr Allister: I do not know when the Department for Transport is going to report further. Dr Murray may have that information.

33. Dr Andrew Murray (Department for Regional Development): There is no published date for that. The initial work was inconclusive, and further work has been commissioned and is under way.

34. The Chairperson: Is there no timetable to indicate when that Department will report further? Are you going to act on that to ensure that it happens sooner rather than later?

35. Dr Murray: We are not carrying out that work; it is being carried out in GB.

36. The Chairperson: Will you be able to give us some idea of the costs with regard to value for money?

37. Mr Priestly: The clear-cut answer is no. We are waiting for a model to be produced, under the auspices of the Department for Transport, that we could use here. Professional minds are being applied to the matter, and they have struggled to produce such a model. I do not see any advantage in us trying to create a model that is separate from the work that is being done across the United Kingdom to produce a model that all roads authorities can use.

38. The Chairperson: I urge you to look into that, because there is no time frame. We are about ensuring that accountability and value for money exist. If the process can be speeded up in any way, I urge you to do that.

39. I invite members to ask questions, and I urge you all to keep questions and answers as succinct as possible.

40. Mr Beggs: I welcome you to the Committee. I give a particular welcome to Dr Murray; this is his second time appearing before the Committee. His previous visit related to the subject that is being discussed today. It is unusual to have a degree of continuity, and it is welcome.

41. In paragraph 85 of the Public Account Committee’s previous report on road openings, dated 17 April 2002, Mr Orr said that there was a high degree of co-ordination between the utilities and Roads Service.

42. Paragraph 2·4 of the current report states that the Water Service notified Roads Service retrospectively of 6,000 road openings in 2001-02, and 27,000 in 2003-04. Paragraph 2·5 states that:

“With regard to these late notifications, Roads Service indicated that there is no way it could have known that Water Service had such a backlog of notices."

43. What does that ignorance of so many road openings say about the accuracy and reliability of your system? How can you be certain that you are being notified of all road openings now? Remember that the Water Service — the body that failed to notify and record with you that road openings were under way — fell within the remit of the Department for Regional Development. Can you explain what happened?

44. Mr Priestly: I acknowledge that that was not an acceptable situation. Under the system, the onus is on the utilities to put the information on NISRANS and, therefore, notify Roads Service of their planned activities.

45. Mr Beggs: We are talking about the failure of another Government agency.

46. Mr Priestly: I understand that. I cannot today accept accountability for what I have already acknowledged was not acceptable. However, I can say that things have improved significantly from that time. Northern Ireland Water, as the Water Service has now become, is working to eliminate all non-compliance issues, including focusing on reducing the number of emergency and urgent notifications. I cannot say anything other than to repeat that what you are discussing was not an acceptable situation. The onus is on us to improve that situation, and a great deal of work has been done to try to reduce the number of non-notifications.

47. Mr Beggs: Can you come back to the Committee with details, by utility, of how many non-notifications and retrospective notifications there were in subsequent years? It would be interesting to know who is failing to make notifications and operate the system properly.

48. Dr Murray: The issue of non-notifications arises when utilities do not notify us at all of the work that they are doing. The cases involving the Water Service, as it then was, were, in fact, late notifications.

49. Mr Beggs: I am asking for figures of non-notifications and late notifications; I assume that you have those. Roads Service makes regular inspections, particularly of main roads. Therefore, I am sure that your engineers identify non-notified work, if the public has not already made complaints. Will you come back to us with figures and identify the offending utility?

50. Dr Murray: The relevant utility is informed of any work that we find on the network that has not been notified, and the work is, subsequently, notified. Those works all become late notifications. We could provide information on that.

51. Mr Beggs: I look forward to seeing the numbers.

52. Paragraph 2·8 states that utilities can be fined up to £1,000 for failing to register or notify in advance of road openings. However, that paragraph also states that no utility has been prosecuted since the introduction of The Street Works (Northern Ireland) Order 1995.

53. Why are you not exercising your right to fine utilities, particularly given the evidence that, in the past, there has been large-scale failure to notify, as well as late notification? Why should any utility bother to notify Roads Service in time? What incentive is there for a utility to notify you, given that there are no consequences to not giving notification?

54. Mr Allister: We have taken legal advice on non-notification. There are some difficulties about the correct level of fine. We have focused our efforts with prosecutions on safety —

55. Mr Beggs: Please tell us what those difficulties are before you move on from the point.

56. Mr Allister: The advice that we have been given is that the Magistrate’s Court much prefers to see issues of non-notification settled between the parties without their being brought to court. Therefore, the effort that we may have to put in to secure a successful prosecution is likely to far outweigh the outcome.

57. We have prosecuted the more serious offences, which involve safety defects and re-instatement breaches. We have taken 17 prosecutions in the intervening period.

58. Mr Beggs: Have you notified the relevant Assembly Committee about that difficulty? Have you considered introducing legislation for on-the-spot fines? Not only would that be a simple solution that would overcome the difficulty, it would be similar to the fines that are imposed for some motoring offences.

59. Mr Allister: Through the assorted bodies that are working with Roads Service and the various utilities, we have tried hard to address the issue. We introduced new legislation — The Street Works (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 2007 — to deal with what may arise in the future. Part of that allows us to introduce fixed-penalty notices. When we introduce the regulations that will allow us to implement such notices, we will have a greater ability to bring legislative powers to bear.

60. Mr Beggs: Finally, paragraph 2.6 of the report states that Roads Service indicated that:

“all substantial road works have been registered on NISRANS".

61. What value of work does not come under the heading of “substantial" roadworks? I am conscious of the fact that at this time of year, additional moneys frequently become available to Roads Service. Much of the service’s work takes place when other areas of the departmental budget are unspent. I am concerned that there may be other, smaller elements of work that are not being planned in advance. Please tell us what value of work is not registered on NISRANS.

62. Mr Allister: An element of judgement is required in identifying a “substantial" roadwork. No definitive limit has been set for that. Our people take into account how much traffic is on the road, whether the road in question is busy, and what scale of work is required. Typically, a lower limit of something like £30,000 worth of work is needed for a “substantial" roadwork. If our people are involved in a resurfacing scheme of a value of £30,000 or more, that is notified to the system as a “substantial" work.

63. Mr Beggs: Can you inform the Committee of the total value of works that require less than that sum? Perhaps you could forward that information to us.

64. Dr Murray: That is the lower limit of our resurfacing schemes. Any resurfacing work that is carried out will be notified, not only on NISRANS, but through regular meetings that we have with utility companies. We do not want any resurfacing to be dug up within the first couple of years after completion.

65. Mr G Robinson: I have two or three questions to ask, and two or three supplementary questions. The inspection code of practice recommends that Roads Service should aim to undertake a 10% sample inspection across all three inspection categories. Paragraph 2.16 and Figure 1 of the report show that, over the past five years, you have not achieved that target. Why has there been such a significant degree of undersampling of category A? What will you do to put that right?

66. Mr Priestly: Category A relates to inspections that are carried out while work is in progress. As I understand it, many works in that category are carried out on an urgent or emergency basis and are usually completed in a day. Therefore, it is quite difficult to reach the sampling figure. However, I understand that our performance in inspecting that category has improved over time. Andrew will give some further detail on that.

67. Dr Murray: There are three different times at which we inspect the works. You mentioned category A inspections, which are carried out while the works are in progress. Throughout the UK, it has proved very difficult to achieve the 10% sample inspection rate. New legislation that is being introduced for noticing will improve that situation.

68. In advance of that, however, Roads Service has agreed a new procedure with the utility companies, whereby our inspectors, rather than simply taking a random sample that has been generated by our system, can also inspect any work that they come across in the course of their normal duties. That has helped us to get very close to that 10% inspection rate.

69. Mr G Robinson: Mr Allister, I have a question for you and two or three supplementary questions, so you are now in the firing line. Paragraph 2.18 of the report states that the under-sampling in category A inspections was due to difficulties in timing your visits to coincide with the utilities opening the road. Can you clarify what specific inspection arrangements are in place for work that is carried out by utilities in the evenings or over the weekends and public holidays?

70. Mr Allister: Once we receive notification, we have a certain length time in which to carry out inspections. Dr Murray can provide some more detail about the timings. We had difficulty timing some visits because we did not receive notification until after the roads had been opened, which, in some cases, happened very quickly.

71. Dr Murray: Some works do not need advance notice. If, for example, emergency works need to be carried out, the utility company could do that work, as long as it notified us within two hours of starting.

72. Mr G Robinson: Can you provide an example of when that has happened?

73. Mr Priestly: My colleague was travelling along a road when a lorry in front threw up a manhole cover. Luckily, the manhole cover did not kill my colleague, but it did rip out the bottom of her car. It turned out that the road that held the manhole cover was defective, so in order to protect life and property, an urgent piece of work was needed. The road had to be closed in order for the manhole cover to be fixed.

74. Dr Murray: Other examples of emergency works include burst water mains and sewers that have collapsed. Quite a bit of work can be classified as urgent.

75. Mr G Robinson: Can you outline what obligations you have to consult on street works? How do you ensure that local stakeholders — particularly businesses — whose trade is likely to affected, have the opportunity to influence the timing, nature, and layout of works in order to minimise disruption?

76. Dr Murray: The most important piece of consultation and liaison work that we do is with other utilities under The Street Works (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. That work is done through the Northern Ireland Roads and Utilities Committee (NIRAUC) and the Divisional Roads and Utilities Committee (DRAUC). At those meetings, forward programmes of works are discussed in advance of anything actually being entered on the computerised register.

77. I explained this in an earlier response to the Chairperson. When works are organised on the ground, our instructions to the people who are working on our behalf — or that of the utilities — are that if the works will cause disruption, we expect them to advertise the scheme publicly well in advance and to enter into discussions with the various local stakeholders, such as frontagers or businesses. We use those standard practices in order to try to minimise disruption.

78. Mr G Robinson: When a project is completed, how can you determine whether stakeholders’ needs have been met? Also, how do you ensure that lessons have been learned and carried forward to future schemes?

79. Mr Allister: If you were in my office every day and were to see the letters that I receive from stakeholders, you would understand that I have a very good handle on whether people are satisfied. I also get a lot of feedback from my divisional staff who attend divisional meetings with councils. We are only too well aware of the feedback on how roadworks are handled.

80. I also assure you that, the moment that something happens on the ground, the phones start to ring in our section offices, and that triggers our attempt to respond. Most of the lessons learned are implemented straight away by taking any necessary action. If a major situation arises as a result of substantial roadworks, we sit down after the scheme has been completed and conduct a formal exercise on any lessons to be learned. However, responses to the vast majority of schemes are received when we are still on site. In those cases, changes are made there and then before leaving the site.

81. Mr G Robinson: That leads me on to the situation in Ballykelly, which is in my constituency, in August 2008 when a roadworks scheme lasted for approximately four to six weeks. Roads Service was aiming to rectify what had been an underlying sewerage problem for perhaps five or six years. However, I was not too happy with how the work was carried out; in particular, the consultation was abysmal. Up to half a dozen shops were affected and practically had close for those four to six weeks.

82. The shopkeepers were able to conduct only minimal trade until they contacted me and another councillor. We arranged a meeting with you and Northern Ireland Water to try to relieve much of the hardship that was being caused to those traders, and after that meeting, progress was slow.

83. I was alarmed by the lack of consultation. The job had not been supposed to start until the Monday or Tuesday, but, by the Friday morning, the entire street was closed, and it remained closed throughout the weekend. The shopkeepers lost a great deal of trade, which, they cannot afford to do, particularly in the current economic situation. They were not even told about the possibility of receiving compensation — although I have since heard that they will not be compensated for their loss of trade and earnings. The way in which the entire scheme was handled was high-handed and lax. Someone was definitely not doing their job on that occasion. The major issue was the lack of — or extremely poor — consultation.

84. Mr Allister: I do not know the individual circumstances of that case.

85. Mr G Robinson: Perhaps you could find out what happened.

86. Mr Allister: I will take it up with the divisional manager for that area.

87. To make some general points, our instructions to staff are based on good planning and advance notice. In fact, we have requirements for the length of advance notice that must be given, particularly for roadworks on major roads. Notification must appear in the local press, and our staff must demonstrate that they have consulted with the various stakeholders and those who own shops with frontages on to the affected roads. If there is a shortcoming, we will have to determine how to address it. I undertake to do that, and I will talk to the divisional manager.

88. Mr G Robinson: I want to point out that I have no issue with the contractor. He was faced with an enormous problem, and he tried to manage it as best he could.

89. Mr Craig: I want the Committee to consider paragraph 2.33, which contains the alarming admission that you do not have a system to track cases in which the utilities fail to issue a warranty notice and repair the defects about which you have notified them already.

90. Paragraph 2.34 goes on to highlight the fact that, even of those utility companies that have notified you, only around 6% of failed inspections are actually inspected to check whether the follow-up repair has been carried out to the appropriate standard. I have to ask the obvious question: what sort of message does that send out to utility companies? Is the message that those companies can do the work wrongly, and can do it wrongly again, but that that will not really matter because the chances of actually being caught out are very limited?

91. When will there be a proper follow-up to those types of repairs that must be carried out a second time? I have even experienced occasions when repairs had to be carried out a third time.

92. Mr Allister: First, I accept the findings in the report that the follow-up in that area has been low and unacceptable. We have taken some steps since the report was published to make changes, and, indeed, we will make further changes. To discuss the specific comments, the utility company accepted the majority of the defects, but in many cases, no warranty notice was raised. Indeed, those cases represented a substantial number of the total failed inspections.

93. Our legal advice at that time was that we needed to be very careful with following up outstanding warranties, because they show that the responsibility and liability for the defect lies with the utility. In order to protect the public purse, we must be very careful that we do not leave ourselves open to compensation claims.

94. You are right to state that there was an issue with the notification system in that the defects were not being tracked. There is a notification system called NISRANS, which has been amended to improve the amount of tracking that is done and the amount of information that is provided.

95. In 2008, over 200 staff in the Department were trained in the use of the revised NISRANS; the issue has been raised and staff have been given directions about what action they should take. The new NISRANS that the Department is procuring at the minute, and that will hopefully be in place by the middle of this year, will provide even more functionality and more reports that will prompt further action in that area.

96. Mr Craig: You touched on the legal advice about not following up, which is one of the other issues that I want to consider and which was mentioned earlier. I listened carefully to your arguments about that matter; you are basically assessing what course of action is least costly to the Department.

97. You indicated that fixed penalties will be introduced. Can you give any idea of the timescale for that? I agree that it would be a much more efficient system. We can argue about the legal niceties of it all, but unfortunately, at present there is a mess out there, and Joe Public — including myself — is left bouncing over the holes and the humps that some of those companies leave. Does Roads Service itself not have overall responsibility to protect the road network and the safety of users, especially given the fact, as you admitted already, that most roads are stretched beyond their capacity?

98. Mr Allister: I will return to the timescale for, and the use of, fixed-penalty notices in a moment. However, I will first assure you that Roads Service takes its safety responsibilities for the condition of the road network very seriously. To add to my earlier answer about liability for the defects lying with the utility, following legal advice, we implemented a policy that stated that if the defects in question were at a stage where they were liable to be a serious safety defect — in our terms, that means that they are in excess of 50 mm deep — we would take action, regardless of liability. A policy to that effect is in place, so if the defect is greater than 50 mm deep in a busy traffic area, we will take action to protect the general travelling public. That is very important.

99. Primary legislation for the introduction of fixed-penalty notices has been in place since 2007, and those notices will be for noticing offences. We will be able to prosecute for defects in the same way as we have in the past.

100. The report indicates that the new regulations that will permit fixed-penalty notices will be introduced at some point in 2009. However, that depends on the progress of the detailed work that is being undertaken in GB, where the relevant bodies are much better resourced to do such work. We will follow on from that work. Consequently, and given our dependency on the completion of that development work, I do not know whether the regulations will come into effect here in 2009. Nevertheless, having undertaken our own development work on the situation in Northern Ireland, when arrangements are agreed to in GB, we will be in a position to implement our regulations. However, we are still able to use current regulations to instigate prosecutions for defects.

101. Mr Craig: Am I right in saying that the fixed-penalty system will apply only to failures to notify?

102. Dr Murray: Fixed-penalty notices will be applied to a range of offences. It might be worth putting defects into context; we are not talking about a failure to attend to great holes in roads. The inspection code of practice includes tight reinstatement tolerances, and when a utility reinstates a trench, it is considered a failure if, when we inspect it, an edge is a few millimetres out of flush with the adjacent road. We advise the utility of such results, and it is up to it to carry out necessary repairs. A utility remains responsible for a defect until it has notified us of the completion of the repair, and the utility must then guarantee its work for a further two years.

103. Mr Craig: With regard to paragraph 2.4 of the report, how satisfied are you that a sample size of 400 cores a year creates adequate confidence in the results? Although you said that your statisticians considered the efficacy of that sample size, I, and other members, could produce numerous examples to demonstrate that that is not the case. Were your statistics verified independently? The members here may not be confident about whether you obtained a sample size that was adequate to determine the quality of repairs.

104. Dr Murray: The utilities also take core samples of work that is carried out by their contractors; they pay for the reinstatements, so they take a large number of cores to ensure that they get what they pay for. As well as that and our routine inspections, Roads Service, along with the Department’s utility partners on NIRAUC, instigated a sample-coring regime that has been operating for many years, including at the time of the previous PAC hearing. In fact, this is the only part of the UK in which such a long-term coring regime has been undertaken in order to improve performance.

105. After the previous PAC hearing, we asked the Department’s statisticians what sample size would be required in order to obtain a representative coring result. They told us that 270 cores a year would be sufficient. At that time, we were carrying out only 200 a year, but we increased that number to 400 a year — 200 in each six-month period. We believe that that provides a good degree of confidence about compliance levels for reinstatements throughout the Province, particularly because that time-based series enables us to ascertain trends from one six-month period to the next.

106. Mr Priestly: The statisticians on whose advice we rely are outposted from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA). In that sense, they are independent.

107. Mr Craig: Does that mean that they are semi-independent?

108. Mr Priestly: Yes. They provide us with professional advice.

109. Mr Craig: Given that the majority of your statistical samples come from the contractors, are you absolutely confident that the information that you receive is correct? I could take you to about two dozen areas in my constituency on which everybody has the opinion that the repairs were not good enough.

110. Dr Murray: The core measures the thickness of the bound, blacktop layers at the top of reinstatements. That is all that we measure. Generally, a reinstatement is about 100 mm — or 4 inches — thick, and the contractor must lay that within plus or minus 5 mm of the required thickness. Our coring survey simply establishes whether that has been done. If the reinstatements are laid within the tolerance, we regard those as passes. If they are outside that 5mm tolerance — either thicker or thinner — we regard those as failures.

111. Mr Priestly: A separate regime assesses the quality of reinstatements. If those reinstatements break down within a shorter timescale than one would expect, Roads Service can force the contractor to relay them.

112. Mr Craig: Do the core samples prove only that the contractor met the technical details of the contract that they were given, that is, the thickness of the reinstatements? Does that mean that they do not provide any statistics with regard to how poor or good the actual job was?

113. Dr Murray: Our sample inspection results provide that information — the coring survey is over and above that.

114. Mr Craig: Are you absolutely content with the information that states that the contractors are laying the reinstatements to the correct technical specifications?

115. Dr Murray: The graph on page 26 of the report shows the coring failure rate for all utilities. Although we are still not content that that rate is as good as it could be, it shows a very positive trend. The pass rate has improved substantially over the years, so we are pleased.

116. Ms Purvis: I want to talk about the quality of reinstatements as discussed in paragraph 3.3 of the report. The previous PAC report on the matter noted that the quality of the reinstatements that utilities carried out was unacceptable. Roads Service accepted the recommendation and indicated that its ultimate aim was to reduce the coring failure rate to 10% as speedily as possible.

117. In paragraph 3·3 of the report, it is explained that the failure to meet that 10% target was explained on the basis that that was “extremely challenging". Unless I am missing something, I do not know what is challenging about filling in holes.

118. Dr Murray: There is nothing challenging about filling in holes, but it is very challenging to ensure that the blacktop layers are within 5 mm of the required thickness. We are talking about outdoor work that is carried out in all weather conditions. Basically, back-fill stone material is put into a trench at a level that must be within 5 mm of the defined level. If it is not, the reinstatement will not be the correct depth and it will fail.

119. Ms Purvis: Why do you think that there has been a failure to achieve the 10% target, particularly over the period of time to which we refer?

120. Mr Priestly: These issues must be set in context. It should be acknowledged that the report indicates that there has been a very significant improvement in the failure rates. At the time of the previous PAC hearing, the pass rate was 63%, but today, the figure is 86%. By any stretch of the imagination, that is a very significant improvement. The target figure of 10% is high bar to get over, but progress is being made towards achieving it. We appreciate that we are not yet there and that more work is needed to get there, but it is worth acknowledging that there has been a very significant improvement in performance.

121. Ms Purvis: I acknowledge the progress that has been made, but I am struggling to understand how filling in holes and the failure to do so properly over a number of years — we are not talking about inexperienced people; we are talking about utilities that do this work regularly — is down to inexperienced contractors. What is it down to?

122. Mr Priestly: “Filling in holes" is a lovely way of putting it, but in many cases, it is not just a patch that needs to be filled in. Trenches will be laid for a couple of miles along a road, and getting it to within the tolerances that Andrew is talking about is quite tricky in all sorts of conditions. Similarly, if you are resurfacing a road, it is not just a patch that needs to be resurfaced, and that is a big job.

123. Dr Murray: It might be reassuring for the Committee to know that we have liaised with our counterparts throughout Scotland and in parts of England, and we have not found anywhere where their coring pass rate is higher than that in Northern Ireland.

124. Ms Purvis: That is reassuring. I acknowledge the performance over the past number of years. How will you ensure that that performance and improvement is sustained and built upon?

125. Dr Murray: We have liaised with all the utilities on this issue, and through NIRAUC and DRAUC, we have been reporting the results and sharing good practice. I expect to see further improvements in the years ahead as the utilities companies amend the conditions of their contracts and specifications. We heard recently that NIW has adopted new contractual procedures that are aimed at improving its pass rate.

126. Mr Priestly: It is worth adding that Roads Service requires all the utilities to produce action plans to demonstrate how they intend to reach the target.

127. Ms Purvis: Have you received those action plans from all the utilities?

128. Mr Priestly: Yes.

129. Ms Purvis: Including NIW?

130. Mr Priestly: Yes.

131. Ms Purvis: Is it a detailed action plan?

132. Dr Murray: Yes.

133. Ms Purvis: I am glad to hear that.

134. I refer you to paragraph 3.14 of the report and the former Water Service’s coring failure rate, which is still, at 19%, the highest of all the utilities. The DFP memorandum after the previous PAC report stated that:

“Roads Service will closely monitor the performance of Water Service, which will be directly answerable to the DRD Accounting Officer for the quality of the work."

135. You explained how, according to your statistics, NIW still accounts for the majority of road openings. Why do you think that it has taken so long to get to grips with the poor performance of what was formerly the Water Service?

136. Mr Priestly: There has been a huge improvement in NIW’s approach. At the last review, it was passing only 50% of its tests. The last validated figures were 81%; its unvalidated performance figures from December are 83%. It is on a path of improvement.

137. However, I do not think that it is right to single out Northern Ireland Water. In looking at the performance figures, only one utility is above the 10% figure. Northern Ireland Electricity, for example, is at 85%, and there is not a big gap between 85% and 83%. Therefore, I think it must be acknowledged that Northern Ireland Water has sat up and taken notice and is driving an improvement programme.

138. It is undoubtedly the case that Northern Ireland Water faces huge challenges. It opens more roads than anybody else, and it faces more emergency and urgent openings so that it can deal with burst water mains, collapsed sewers and so on, than anybody else. There has been a history of underinvestment in our water infrastructure. There is a huge capital programme to improve and update our water infrastructure, water mains and waste-water treatment plants, and that level of activity will be maintained.

139. Northern Ireland Water is starting to learn lessons from other utilities. It has a programme of training its people more effectively to use NISRANS, to get its people to work more closely with inspectors in Roads Service, and to understand what this business is about.

140. It has reorganised its operations directorate so that all jobs are issued from two centres, one in Altnagelvin and the other in Belfast. Those who plan the work sit with those who operate NISRANS to improve communication, planning and co-ordination. The company has changed the nature of its contracting. It now has a super-bundle contract that brings together a range of those activities. The contractor who won the road openings and reinstatement contract is well established and works for several utilities; indeed, last year, it won the Northern Ireland Contractor of the Year award for its work on road openings.

141. Therefore, we can look forward to a further improvement in Northern Ireland Water’s approach and to further progress being made towards meeting the 10% target.

142. Ms Purvis: Are you confident that the newly appointed, well-established contractor will continues to reduce the 17% figure?

143. Mr Priestly: I have some confidence about that because the contract is structured to provide incentives. Where reinstatements do not meet the required standards, the contractor will suffer financial penalties.

144. Mr McLaughlin: You gave us the welcome news that the revised action plan has been submitted. The report indicates that by May 2008, it had not been submitted. When was it received?

145. Dr Murray: The action plan was late in arriving from Northern Ireland Water. As far as I know, it was delivered in December 2008. Having said that, however, Northern Ireland Water assured us that, although the action plan had not been finalised or forwarded to Roads Service, it was available in draft form and the company has been working to it for several months.

146. Mr McLaughlin: Paragraph 3.15 of the report tells us that the chief executive of Northern Ireland Water had ceased to attend monthly joint meetings with Roads Service. Does he now attend those meetings?

147. Dr Murray: Those meetings were between Roads Service and Water Service, as it then was. They were useful, and the agenda was usually packed. Water Service then became a Government-owned company and experienced many new pressures on its time. However, we have now recommenced with a series of bilateral meetings between the Department — including Roads Service — and Northern Ireland Water, and the permanent secretary chaired the first of those meetings. Those meetings addressed street works, coring failures and several other issues that are mentioned in the report.

148. Mr McLaughlin: That sounds like a more formal approach — perhaps it is a better one. How long has it been in place?

149. Mr Priestly: Since about September 2008.

150. Mr McLaughlin: How many times have those meetings been held?

151. Mr Priestly: The chairman and acting chief executive and I chaired the initial meeting. Having got the forum up and running, we passed responsibility for chairing it to my senior finance director and the director of operations of Northern Ireland Water. It met again in December 2008, and it now has a programme of work and a range of operational issues — not just road openings — on which we can formally liaise.

152. It is important to stress that those meetings take place at the top management level of both organisations. Much more detailed liaison takes place between those who are involved in operations, and that, too, seems to be working well.

153. Mr McLaughlin: For the record, how often will the bilateral meetings be held? Are they informal? Will it be quarterly or six-monthly? There have been two meetings in two months. Will that be the pattern?

154. Mr Priestly: No; we had one meeting in September and another in December. The best that I can do is send you the group’s terms of reference. They may show how frequently the group will meet. My best guess is that it will meet as and when necessary to report and follow up on the work that it is doing.

155. Mr McLaughlin: The developments of the previous quarter are welcome but late. Are you content that the water utility, which was the worst-performing utility until that time, is coming up to the mark?

156. Mr Priestly: I am sorry, I do not understand the question.

157. Mr McLaughlin: The report highlights significant failures that the company needs to address. Are you content that that Go-co is aware of those issues and is taking the necessary remedial action?

158. Mr Priestly: The simple answer to both questions is yes. I have discussed the matter face to face with the chairman and acting chief executive, and I am convinced and confident that they are taking the matter seriously. My reply to Dawn Purvis outlined some of the actions that they have taken and highlighted the improvement in the company’s performance. By any stretch of the imagination, an increase from a 50% pass rate to an 83% pass rate is a significant improvement, and 83% is not far behind some other utilities. At the moment, only one utility is meeting the 10% target, and, therefore, it is perhaps wrong to single out Northern Ireland Water. I do not dispute for one moment that Northern Ireland Water has further to go, but I am confident that it is on an improvement track towards achieving the 10% target.

159. Mr McLaughlin: The company has a poor record of late notifications of road openings. Emergencies will occur, and it is appropriate to welcome and praise prompt and effective repairs when they are done. However, the excessively high rate of late notifications has a direct impact on the inspection process, particularly category A inspections. Can you assure the Committee that there is no abuse or manipulation of the process?

160. Mr Allister: We have concerns about the level of emergency and urgent notifications. There is no evidence of any abuse, but we have, over several months, raised the matter with Northern Ireland Water.

161. Mr McLaughlin: I note Mr Priestly’s comments about confidence in the company’s performance. How do you determine that there is no abuse or manipulation of the process? What questions do you ask? Do you carry out your enquiries in writing, face to face or by telephone?

162. Dr Murray: The emergency and urgent works are defined clearly in the code of practice, and Roads Service and NIW are aware of those definitions. There have been cases, particularly in the past, where we have not been happy that those definitions have been applied properly, and we have raised that matter at divisional level. Moreover, Roads Service representatives meet regularly with various utility representatives — including those from NIW — at divisional level. We have raised those concerns, and, as a result, the number of emergency and urgent works has been reducing. However, the nature of NIW’s work is different from that of the other utilities; it has an old network, and much of its work is driven by burst water mains and sewer collapses. We expect the company to experience a high proportion of urgent and emergency work because those matters must be attended to quickly.

163. Mr McLaughlin: I accept that emergencies arise.

164. Mr Priestly: I raised the issue of urgent and emergency openings with Northern Ireland Water, and in my reply to Dawn Purvis, I mentioned that the operations directorate has been rearranged to bring together operations staff that are involved in street works notifications. Those staff have been relocated to work-control centres in Belfast and Altnagelvin. That is part of a major restructuring exercise to bring together in work-control centres those Northern Ireland Water staff who are responsible for inputting information to NISRANS and who have previously worked in locations across Northern Ireland. That will enable a more effective approach to be taken.

165. I was told that in those work-control centres there is a focus on ensuring that all necessary work is notified within the appropriate timescales. Staff there are seeking to address late and retrospective notifications, and they are seeking to ensure that jobs are categorised properly as urgent or emergency jobs. That involves staff being trained in order that they can undertake their responsibilities properly.

166. Mr McLaughlin: The statistics demonstrate that we are talking about many thousands of emergency notifications. Mr Allister said a moment ago that he was unaware of any abuse or manipulation of the system. It is all to the good if that reflects a systematic assessment and confidence that is based on a rigorous examination, but I am simply trying to establish how you can be satisfied that there is no manipulation of the system. We are entitled to an assurance that there is no such manipulation. Late notification means that there is no opportunity for a category A inspection, so how can we be assured that there is no manipulation?

167. Mr Priestly: We cannot give you the strong assurance that you are looking for. Indeed, Geoff acknowledged that there were concerns.

168. Mr McLaughlin: What questions did you ask the utilities? Did you present those questions in writing, by telephone or face to face?

169. Dr Murray: This has been an issue. We are aware that if works are notified as emergency or urgent, or, indeed, if they are late notifications, we cannot carry out our category A inspections. We also cannot co-ordinate the work, because we do not have time to go back to the utilities and tell them that they cannot dig in a certain area because someone else is carrying out work there or because we are about to carry out a resurfacing scheme. Therefore, we lose the ability to co-ordinate and carry out category A inspections. We have been challenging the utilities at divisional level on any cases in the past where we have felt that they were using the wrong category of works.

170. Mr McLaughlin: You have still not told me how you challenge them.

171. Dr Murray: We challenge them through face-to-face meetings.

172. Mr McLaughlin: Are formal records kept of those discussions?

173. Dr Murray: Yes.

174. Mr McLaughlin: Given those discussions and analysis of the levels of emergency or late notifications, can we be confident that there is no manipulation or abuse of the system or avoidance of category A inspections?

175. Dr Murray: Yes. They have been reducing, and they are probably now at a level that indicates little or no incorrect categorisation.

176. Mr Lunn: My questions relate to town centres and high-amenity surfaces, as you call them. Thousands of pounds are spent on improving the look of those surfaces, and your contractors then come along and turn them into a patchwork. Paragraph 3.21 of the report states that there are no specific arrangements for inspecting reinstatements of high-amenity surfaces in town centres. Why is that? In view of their visibility and importance to town centres, do you not think that that they should get some special treatment?

177. Dr Murray: The inspection code of practice does not contain any provision for special inspections of high-amenity areas. However, Roads Service inspects all large-scale works. It inspects areas where a utility is undertaking planned works that involve putting significant trenches through high-amenity areas or other areas. It is also worth pointing out that the reinstatement code of practice, in its most recent form, has been amended to include special requirements in relation to high-amenity surfaces.

178. Mr Lunn: There is a photograph of Castle Lane on page 25 of the report. Who inspected that horror story?

179. Mr Priestly: That photograph does not tell the true story.

180. Mr Allister: One could look at that photograph and say that it is an example of Roads Service and the whole system being ahead of the game, because it shows that we were aware that a bigger game was being played, which was a complete renewal of the surface in that area of Belfast city centre; that work was being undertaken by the Department for Social Development (DSD). That temporary reinstatement does not look good — there is no doubt about that — but do not forget that that whole surface will be taken up and replaced.

181. The important point about that surface is that it should be safe for pedestrians, because they use the area a great deal. That is an example of us working with utilities. We have identified that major replacement works will take place there; therefore, instead of bearing the expense of reinstating that surface and within two or three months having to rip it all up again, it has been made safe — very safe — for the high level of footfall in the area.

182. Mr Lunn: You are probably glad that I asked you that question. [Laughter.]

183. I wondered why no one else wanted it.

184. Mr Priestly: It is an important point. MLAs and councillors from across the Province often write to us about the state of a road. I have done it with Geoff, in a jocular way. Jim Shannon knows that Finlays Road was in an awful state. I asked Geoff why it was like that, and he replied that we were planning to resurface it. Therefore, we asked the utilities whether they had work planned for Finlays Road and advised them that, if so, to start it straightaway.

185. Mr Lunn: I will come to that in my second question.

186. When you use the word “temporary", what period of time do you mean? If we take Castle Lane as an example, but I do not go down there — it is not a part of my area. Has the surface there been reinstated?

187. Dr Murray: Work on that project is under way, but it has been delayed. When those temporary reinstatements were carried out, it is possible that we expected that the work there would follow much more promptly.

188. Mr Priestly: The Chairperson looks sceptical.

189. The Chairperson: I am sceptical — I am sorry to butt in. I know the area well, and I have been there recently. It has been like that for many years. Mr Lunn asked Mr Allister what period of time we are to understand by the word “temporary". Mr Allister’s response — that he does not know what “a temporary basis" — is a terrible one to give to the Committee. To me “a temporary basis" means a week or two weeks — it is not a matter of years, as is the case in this instance.

190. Dr Murray: It is worth pointing out that temporary reinstatements are very uncommon. The inspection code of practice encourages first-time, permanent reinstatements. Few areas are left in that way. We carried out a sample check of over 4,000 reinstatements to find out in what proportion of cases the contractor left the site with a temporary reinstatement in place. We discovered that that was done in only two cases.

191. Mr Lunn: When the contractor moves on to a site where there is a high-amenity surface, is there an obligation to reinstate with the same material that has been dug up? I have heard the argument that contractors cannot always find the same material that they have dug up because patterns have changed and become out-of-date. Is there mileage in the argument that contractors should be more careful in digging up surfaces and that they should do so with a view to putting the same materials down? Looking at the photograph of Castle Lane, it seems that the person using the digger did not care how much damage he did to the surface. Had time been taken to lift the paving stones and to preserve them and reinstate them, much of that damage could have been avoided. Whether it was a temporary surface is beside the point — the point is that good use should be made of expensive materials.

192. Dr Murray: Several simple safety defects have occurred on the Castle Lane site. They have been patched by Roads Service, and work has been undertaken by utilities. The member is right to say that it is possible to save materials with that sort of modular surface. We keep a stock of Sardinian granite, which was used to pave the area at the front of the Belfast City Hall. It is rarely used, however, because when contractors have dug it up, that expensive material has been saved.

193. Mr Lunn: Every other member has mentioned a case in his or her own constituency. I might as well join in the fun.

194. Mr McLaughlin: I did not.

195. Mr Lunn: That is right; you did not.

196. Mr McLaughlin: I could talk about the road to Derry.

197. Mr Lunn: Roads Service decided to remove the edging stones along Bachelors Walk in Lisburn. They were lovely old granite sets, which are hugely expensive and hard to replace. The idea was that the stones would be dug up very carefully and reinstated in the conservation area in Hillsborough. The intention was that they were to be moved from the edge of one conservation area into a proper conservation area. By the time that a Roads Service contractor dug them up, they were not worth moving because they were in bits. That was a pity, and there was quite an outcry about it. I am glad that you acknowledged that there are circumstances in which those materials can be preserved and reused.

198. Paragraph 3.24 of the report contains five specific recommendations that the Audit Office made in order to enhance performance measurement. Mr Priestly, can you tell us whether you agree with each of those proposals? What actions will you take in response to them?

199. Mr Allister: I am happy to deal with that question. I think that, by and large, these recommendations are positive. We regard the issue of performance indicators as particularly important, not just in this area, but in the whole business area of the Roads Service. We place great store in it, particularly in benchmarking.

200. The difficulty is that we are probably ahead of the game in GB, in that no other areas of GB have developed performance benchmarks or performance indicators to the extent that we have. Therefore, we have been unable to benchmark against them.

201. I agree that there is considerable merit in the specific recommendations in paragraph 3.24, although there is one area that I have a slight issue with. Paragraph 3.24(ii) states that:

“it would be useful to formally benchmark the performance of Divisions and Section Offices".

202. I would like to give that some consideration, because utilities’ boundaries — and therefore their contractor’s boundaries — do not match our divisional or section boundaries. We are trying to improve the performance of utilities — that is the thrust of the report and of the work that we are doing.

203. My experience is that benchmarking costs money, so I want to be absolutely assured, from a value-for-money point of view, that in benchmarking our divisional and section offices at that level, and all that goes with that benchmarking, I will get added value.

204. I think that the rest of the recommendations are useful, and we will start to work towards implementing them.

205. Mr Lunn: Paragraph 3.24(v) refers to your NISRANS. Earlier, you said that you had discovered that DSD was going to resurface Castle Lane and that there was therefore not much point in doing much more than a temporary reinstatement. In other words, that meant that co-operation among Departments was necessary. I want to ask you about that sort of co-operation.

206. Will the new up-to-date, all-singing, all-dancing NISRANS involve any notification to the various utilities that major work will be done on a particular section of road? I will give you an example of what I mean. Lisburn City Council was kind enough to send me to Valencia a few years ago. The city centre management team there — and I see people nodding here —

207. Mr Wells: I got as far as Scarborough with my council.

208. Mr Lunn: There is a system there whereby if anyone wants to open a road in the city, every utility and Department receives notification. If they then want to take advantage of the open trench, they can do so while the work is ongoing, because they will not get another opportunity to open that section of road or pavement for a number of years except in extremis. That system works very well.

209. The team also managed to reduce the timescale from 90 days over a period of years to 29 days from first notification to the closing of the trench. That sounds like a super system to me. I was hoping that your NISRANS would have something in common with that. What is your view?

210. Dr Murray: Our current NISRANS has that facility. Whenever either a utility or Roads Service enters details of work that is to be carried out — a trench, or in the case of Roads Service, a resurfacing job — that immediately goes into the system and is emailed to any utility company that is interested in the particular area.

211. For example, if Northern Ireland Water had a depot at Altnagelvin in Derry and it wanted to know what work is being carried out in Derry, once Roads Service or the relevant utilities body puts information on that into the system, it is available on Northern Ireland Water’s terminal, and it can see that someone else wants to work in that area.

212. Mr Lunn: That does not create the obligation that that work be carried out; it is almost a courtesy.

213. Dr Murray: If Northern Ireland Water were to see that another agency planned to dig up that road, and Northern Ireland Water had some work to do in the same place, it would be in its interest to carry out its work at the same time.

214. Mr Lunn: Does the system work?

215. Dr Murray: Yes. Given the nature of the work that Roads Service carries out and enters on to the system, a utility is banned from working in the same place until two years after resurfacing has been completed. That means that the system must work. Therefore, utilities consider our work very carefully in order to establish where resurfacing is taking place. The utilities quite often have work to do in advance, and they sometimes ask us to delay our work until they have completed their own.

216. The existing NISRANS has that facility. The new one, which will be acquired this year, will be a map-based system. The same information will be available, but it will be on a mapped background, making it much more user-friendly.

217. Mr Lunn: Another utility that was opening a road should, therefore, notify Roads Service. However, the former Water Service may not always have got around to doing that, but that is understandable, given its circumstances at times. In such situations, does that mean that that road cannot be opened up again for another two years?

218. Dr Murray: No. That obligation applies only to roads that have been resurfaced. In fact, quite often separate utilities have different requirements. For example, if Northern Ireland Water is laying a sewer, the chances are that it will require a deep and wide excavation along the middle of the road. That sort of excavation would not suit electricity or cable companies because their services would be laid at a much lower depth and probably under the footway.

219. In order to prevent the road and the footway being dug up simultaneously, our co-ordination often ensures that jobs are separated rather than being carried out at the same time.

220. Mr Shannon: I am grateful of the opportunity to ask you some questions. An exception to what you are discussing is Finlays Road, where, at the request of local representatives, DRD and Northern Ireland Water worked together. The terrible problem — and the worrying thing — is that that approach has not worked since then.

221. In 2002, the PAC suggested the introduction of fines for utilities that breached agreements by failing to bring roads up to standard. I endorse that approach wholeheartedly. The problem is that we are now in 2009, and we are talking about the introduction of regulations that are necessary to enforce that measure. It has taken seven years of problems to get to where we are today, and I share other members’ frustrations about that. Why has that process taken so long? Can you confirm when enforcement powers against utilities or services that fail to do their jobs properly will be in place?

222. Dr Murray: The fines are already in place.

223. Mr Shannon: That is good to hear. Does that mean that action can be expected?

224. Dr Murray: The fines were in place just before the previous PAC meeting. By that time, the Department had already brought a prosecution, and many more have been brought since.

225. Mr Priestly: It is worth taking a step back and saying that a conscious decision was made that it would be better to try to co-operate with the utilities in order to drive improvements in performance and that court action would be taken only in cases of serious flouting of the legislation.

226. My reading of the report is that that strategy has been successful. The Department has driven a very significant improvement in the performance of utilities. That does not mean that we shy away from taking utilities to court when necessary.

227. Mr Shannon: Is the legislative power in place to give you the punch that you need, now that we are in 2009? Is that the point that we have reached? Why has it taken seven years for the message to filter through?

228. Dr Murray: You are referring to a further development that allows fixed-penalty notices to be issued. Throughout the period since the previous PAC meeting on the matter until now, we have had a system whereby we can prosecute utilities that do not reinstate properly, and, indeed, we have been doing that. We are now working on a further enhancement of the fixed-penalty system, which will be better from our point of view and less expensive to operate. That is being worked on in GB at present; as soon as it is introduced there, we intend to follow suit.

229. Mr Shannon: Do you have any idea of when that will be? I feel that the Department’s power is not sufficient to bring everyone into line. Everyone is being parochial, so I will be too — I could give you four or five examples from my constituency, or more if you would like.

230. The report refers to performance having improved over recent years and the former Water Service’s coring failure rate having fallen from 50% to 19%. Paul, I suggest that whenever you are down our way in Strangford, which I understand you are brave and often, you take a wee run down the Ards Peninsula, and you will find that the 19% of failures are all on the Ards Peninsula.

231. The other week, Conor Murphy told Barry McElduff that he gets more complaints about the roads in West Tyrone and the Ards Peninsula than anywhere else. That is because, in those areas, we seem to have had all the roadworks that ever needed to be done — we have had Phoenix Natural Gas, NIE and DRD all working there. A sewerage and water scheme is going on that would make you believe that more metal is going into the ground in the Ards Peninsula than anywhere else. It is very frustrating.

232. Mr Priestly: Can I comment on that?

233. Mr Shannon: I would be happy if you did.

234. Mr Priestly: As a resident of the Ards Peninsula, I share those concerns. Considerable investment is going into that area — for example, good work is being done on Finlays Road and the Ballyblack Road — but we are subject to a budget. If we had all the money in the world, we would improve all those roads. I was driving in the west of the Province, and I told Geoff that I drove along the road from Cookstown to Dungannon and found it absolutely frightening. Therefore, the Ards Peninsula is not alone. Roads Service is implementing a very significant programme of work that will improve our roads, but that will take time.

235. My second point is that a balance must be struck. The utilities provide vital infrastructure for our communities and our economy. We need infrastructure for telecommunications, water and sewerage. Were there a very restrictive set of arrangements that did not allow utilities to provide such infrastructure, I have no doubt that MLAs would be screaming at us that we were being impossible and are not allowing this society and economy to be developed. Therefore, a balance must be struck, and I think that we are doing that pretty well. I will keep saying it: I was pleased by the report, because it shows that there has been a very significant improvement in performance over the past few years.

236. Mr Shannon: Forgive us, Paul, for not being entirely convinced by what you are saying. Paragraph 3.28 of the report includes terminology such as: “was exploring this possibility"; “no basis as yet to quantify"; “this has not been completed"; “may provide a framework". Does that wording give confidence to this Committee that the recommendations will be carried out and that the stringent strength that you need to enforce those upon utilities will be available? We are very glad to have all that infrastructural work done, but we would like to have it done in such a way that we do not have to experience the consequences when we travel on the roads in our cars.

237. I want to follow up on the issue that Trevor mentioned regarding co-ordination between the services. As representatives, people sometimes call on us to ensure that better water is going to certain areas; for example, we are approached by drivers who do not live in a particular area but who travel on the roads there and want work to be done on them. One such example is the Loughries Road. As a representative for the Newtonwards area, I asked Northern Ireland Water to provide better water for the residents of Loughries Road, which it agreed to do. However, just as it was about to lay new pipes, Roads Service put down a new surface. When I heard that, I contacted Northern Ireland Water to stop it from laying pipes along a road on which Roads Service had spent £60,000. Consequently, Northern Ireland Water had to renege on its decision. It will now lay the pipes once the new road surface has settled, which will be in about a years’ time. That was an unbelievable situation. In all honesty, we must have better co-ordination between the utilities. However, that is not a criticism.

238. Chairperson, you raised a point about the Ards Peninsula, so forgive me for being parochial again. Some of the roads in that area are not even the width of the Table here in the Senate — they are one-car roads. They have stood the test of 50 or 60 years of use, until — guess what — contractors laid new pipes. As a consequence of 3 ft trenches being dug, the cores of those small roads collapsed and were destroyed. I am very unhappy about the situation.

239. I have met Stanley Lamb from Roads Service and representatives from the Department for Regional Development. The damage that is caused to those small roads is not the fault of DRD; rather, it is the fault of Northern Ireland Water. It destroyed those roads and then expected Roads Service to resurface them. Northern Ireland Water wrecked the core of those roads. The Ballyeasborough Road is one such example. Northern Ireland Water has wrecked the hedges, the curbs, and entrances to people’s houses along that road. The core of the road has been undermined. I made this comment last week, and I will make it again: Northern Ireland Water has left holes on the road big enough for a badger to fit through.

240. Whenever people cannot drive their cars down a road because of its condition, there is something wrong. Those types of situations are common in the Ards Peninsula, along, for example, the Tullymally Road, the Ballyeasborough Road, and the Drumardan Road. Therefore, co-ordination is necessary. A different control —if that is the correct term — must be in place for the smaller roads. If work to a road effectively destroys some of its ability to provide service, Roads Service will put down surface dressing using tar and small stones. They think that if people cannot see the holes, they will not know that any existed. Guess what again: the holes usually reappear a fortnight after Roads Service has filled them in.

241. Forgive me, but I am expressing the viewpoints of my constituents. You know who those people are, Paul; you meet them every day, and they probably bend your ear about the matter as well. How we are going to improve the current situation?

242. Mr Allister: Mr Shannon raised quite a few points that he wants me to address, Chairperson. [Laughter.]

243. The Chairperson: If possible, please, get to the point as quickly as possible and keep your answers brief; other members wish to ask questions.

244. I just wondered whether Mr Priestly, as a constituent, goes to Mr Shannon when he has a concern about a road. [Laughter.]

245. Mr Allister: I am glad that you asked that I keep my answers brief, Chairperson.

246. I shall make two points, the first concerning the overall progress that we have made, and the second concerns the need for further legislation. I emphasise that there must be a twin-track approach to the issue of utilities openings roads. The first, and most important, aspect is co-operation and partnership with others. That message has come across loud and clear. I acknowledge fully the need for effective legislation, but only as a last resort. Given the co-operation and partnership that exists between the utilities and as the thrust of the report and the comments made therein, it is clear that significant progress has been made. However, I acknowledge that more must and will be done. We must have a proactive management that ensures that procedures and policies are followed. We must also ensure that there is more co-operation and partnership as well as effective legislation.

247. Mr Shannon raised a point about paragraph 3.28. Earlier, I outlined the difficulties in developing a model that will provide some assurance about the cost of disruption. We are not there yet. It will be very difficult to reach that point until we can apportion costs. Those are factored into the work of the Department for Transport in Great Britain.

248. Mr Shannon spoke about roads being dug up and destroyed. Coincidentally, Dr Murray and I had a similar discussion over lunch today. We discussed a situation in which a road — that is fit for purpose — falls apart all of a sudden after a 3-ft wide hole has been dug close to the pavement. Legislation has been proposed that will create the requirement that utilities resurface entire lane widths or contribute to the costs of carrying out the works.

249. Therefore, good legislation exists. Dr Murray discussed how effective it has been and the fact that we can prosecute under it. The legislation that is on the statute book, The Street Works (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 2007, introduces a new range of measures that will help us further. We aim to bring those into effect as quickly as possible.

250. Mr Shannon: We are trying to determine the timescale of when that will happen and whether the legislation will be strengthened as soon as possible. If you were able to tell the Committee that that would happen next week, I would be happy. The fact that you are unable to is disappointing. Perhaps, you will let us know when you anticipate the legislation will come into effect and when there will, therefore, be changes.

251. Mr Wells: I have been a councillor since 1981. The matter has been a recurring theme throughout that time, during which I have served on three separate district councils. We are still not getting there. You have only to look at the main street of any major town where you can see the various tracks of different colours. Regardless of inconvenience and cost, that makes some of Northern Ireland’s premier tourist sites look unattractive. The streets look a mess — even if they are flat — because there are five or six different colours of tracks along them.

252. Although it is not sequential, I want to return to paragraph 2.23 of the report, which states that you were supposed to carry out a sample of utilities’ performance and publish a report under the code of practice. How can we hold utilities to account if such a report has never entered the public domain? Why has a report not emerged?

253. Mr Allister: I think that we have said that we accept that we could do more as regards publishing reports. The current street works register allows us and utilities to see their performance. To date, we monitor that performance through the Northern Ireland Roads Authority and Utilities Committee and, indeed, through the Divisional Roads Authority and Utilities Committee.

254. We will introduce a new NISRANS— a new registry — later in 2009, which will give us greater reporting facilities. Bearing in mind that the current system is largely a registry and notification system, the new enhancements will facilitate reports that are more user-friendly. We are happy to publish more reports. Although we may not have published reports in the public domain, we have certainly acted on them, as indeed, have utilities, which have also acted on their performance. That is reflected in overall performance to date.

255. Mr Wells: The difference is that the public can view a report on the Internet and can assess how you meet your targets and how utilities perform. Information that is kept under lock and key inside the vaults of Clarence Court or wherever is no use to public representatives or individuals who want to know what goes on.

256. Mr Priestly: We do not keep that information under lock and key. We would be happy to provide you with figures. However, Roads Service’s performance is not being measured; the performance of the utilities is being measured.

257. Mr Wells: That is correct. However, it is your responsibility to tell the public how utilities perform, because they will not do so.

258. Dr Murray: I accept the point, but we are an open organisation that does not mind making information available. However, the information on its own, without data to compare it against, is not particularly useful. For example, it is not particularly useful to know that we have a coring pass rate of 87% unless you know what the coring pass rates are in other areas.

259. Mr Wells: Could such comparators not also be included in your report?

260. Dr Murray: We fully intend to provide that information. However, those benchmarks are not yet available on a national basis. The UK-wide group on which we sit — the Joint Authorities Group (UK), also known as JAG — is developing benchmarks that will be used throughout the UK. We are feeding into that work. We are happy to publish results that will be compared with those of other parts of the UK as soon as that information is available.

261. Mr Priestly: The preliminary information that is available to us is that there will not be a target of a 90% pass rate elsewhere because their utilities cannot reach anything like that level at present.

262. Dr Murray: Generally, the level of GB utilities is around what it was in Northern Ireland when the previous PAC inquiry was carried out. There is quite a difference.

263. Mr Wells: I want to discuss paragraph 2.27 and improvement notices. According to the report, 79 improvement notices should have been issued since 2002-03. However, Roads Service seems to have a deliberate policy of not using improvement notices. Why did you decide to override best practice, as outlined in the inspection code of practice report?

264. Mr Allister: I am not sure that it is best practice; it is not used anywhere. Rather, it is advice. We made the conscious decision not to use the process as outlined in the code of practice because it is too bureaucratic. Although street works is a very important element of my work and one of my priorities, it is not my only priority. Across the Roads Service, there is a wide range of activities that I am responsible for, including development control, major works programmes, grass cutting and normal road maintenance activities.

265. Paragraph 2.26 of the report states that if we issue an improvement notice:

“Utilities are expected to verify and analyse the defect data".

266. The first thing that a utility will do is challenge those defect data; therefore, it becomes a very bureaucratic process. We made the conscious decision, in line with the spirit of the code, to try to persuade utilities, using discussion as the first option, to identify where the problems are. We have carried out a number of interviews of concern with utilities, and throughout the report, performance — as measured by sampling inspections, defects that have been identified and coring defects — is following a positive trend. Those who do similar work in GB recognise that considerable improvements have been driven through without using improvement notices. They are reviewing their situation, and they are not sure that they will issue improvement notices. They also think that the Northern Ireland system is best practice, and they are thinking of implementing it.

267. Mr Wells: There are shades of planning enforcement in what you said — rather than take strident action, you have a cosy chat with the developer. Are you telling me that in all 79 of those instances, the developers were so co-operative that you did not have to serve a notice?

268. Mr Allister: All the indicators suggest that overall performance is moving in a positive direction. Interviews of concern are not a “cosy chat", and we have put on the record already — and I think that it is in the report — that there have been 17 prosecutions since the previous PAC report was published. We are conducting interviews of concern indicating to those involved that they have to shape up or else they will be in trouble and that we will prosecute when necessary. Indeed, we have prosecuted. The issues that I talked about earlier are very important: co-operation, co-ordination and working in partnership. However, we must have teeth behind those, and we must be prepared to use them.

269. Mr Wells: Does that mean that you have decided that the introduction of improvement notices was not sound and that frankly, there was never any need for that methodology?

270. Mr Allister: I stand to be corrected by Dr Murray, but I do not think that anyone has used improvement notices. Is that correct?

271. Dr Murray: They have not been effective, and I think that that is the issue. We decided not to use improvement notices because we thought that they were overly bureaucratic and time consuming. We felt that there was a better way, and it seems that people in GB are coming round to that view as well. It also appears that the practice of issuing improvement notices will be abandoned.

272. Mr Wells: What worries me on a constituency level — realising that the world does not end at Greyabbey — is that all this is done behind closed doors with no public reporting and without any statutory improvement notices being served. It strikes me that a cosy relationship exists between the utilities and Roads Service. I know that you depend on some of those people as contractors in other fields; however, there does not seem to be any openness or transparency in how all this is carried out. It is all done by informal whispering, rather than by really making an example of one or two of the cowboys.

273. Mr Priestly: I am very uncomfortable with the way in which you are trying to characterise this. It is worth repeating some of the replies that we gave earlier. Following deliberation and legal advice, a conscious decision was made to work in co-operation with the utilities to try to drive improvement, as that was considered more effective. I repeat: my reading of this report is that there has been a very significant improvement in performance, and I am gratified by that. However, we acknowledge that we have a way to go.

274. We also said that we do not shy away from taking robust legal action where we judge it necessary against utilities that are seriously flouting the legislation. However, we are convinced that our approach of trying to work in co-operation and partnership has produced results. I am comforted and assured that we are on the right track, given that GB has acknowledged that our system works well and has copied it, rather than going down the road of retribution, hauling companies before courts and issuing improvement notices. If necessary, we will take such action, but to date our approach has been effective, and we are making the necessary progress. We do not have cosy chats with contractors. We deal with the utilities, not their contractors. It is for utilities to manage their contractors and their contractors’ performance. We have more than enough to do with managing our own contractors.

275. Mr Allister: I acknowledged that we need to do more public reporting, and I gave the Committee a commitment that we will do so. Our current public reporting involves six key performance indicators that were recommended at the time of the previous PAC report. More indicators were recommended, but we selected six, on which we have reported publicly since 2004.

276. I want to put the issue of cosy chats and cosy relationships into context. The condition of my road network means that I am under extreme pressure. Everybody knows that my budget for structural maintenance is under pressure and suboptimal. In the next two years, that budget will be approximately £70 million against an independently assessed need of £105 million. I also have a road network asset of approximately £16 billion. I am concerned that our investment is insufficient to maintain road condition, and in 2008, I had a condition reduction of £53 million in that asset.

277. I assure you that I am focused on doing all that I can to protect the condition of the road network. I assure members that I take a very robust stance on managing the performance of utilities. I transfer that stance to my director of network services, Dr Murray, all his committees, the divisional roads managers, low-level section engineers and the individual sections who manage those matters daily. As chief executive of Roads Service, I stand back, consider the indicators, and decide what further action I can take. I am looking at positive indicators, which are reflected in the report. Therefore, we do not sit down and have cosy chats: we go further than that, and we take the issue seriously. We have demonstrated today how seriously we take the matter, and in my opinion, that is reflected in the indicators and in the fact that, as a last resort, we are prepared to take legislative or prosecution action.

278. The Chairperson: I assure you that whether your budget is £1 or £1 billion, the Committee will ensure that it provides value for money. Sometimes we must ask such questions in order to get the desired answer.

279. Another four members want to speak, and I request that the questions and answers are as brief as possible.

280. Ms Purvis: I have a couple of points to make; forgive me if you clarified these matters at the start of the meeting. Collating information on and examining the nature of customer complaints will aid service improvement and increase the satisfaction of road users. Mr Allister referred to that issue at the beginning of today’s session. How do you collate information on customer complaints? What type of information do you collate? How do you use that information to improve service? What feedback do you give to customers?

281. Mr Allister: We take the matter very seriously. We conduct an annual customer survey, and we have done so for several years. We target an overall customer satisfaction rating of 75% — which is difficult to achieve, as you can imagine — and we ask a range of questions to householders across Northern Ireland.

282. That is only one part of what we do. As I read my mail every day, look at questions from MLAs, visit meetings of the Committee for Regional Development, and get feedback from staff who go to council meetings, I am only too aware of the public’s opinion on utilities. We are very conscious of that. Do we use that information to help us to target what we do in future? Absolutely. Whether street works or responses from traffic-calming schemes are in question, we take all that into account when we are planning how we should proceed in the coming year. That is one reason that I was able to answer questions earlier about how seriously we take prior notification, and it is the reason that I am keen to follow up on some of the specific instances that have been raised.

283. Dr Murray: We have to be very selective about the questions that we ask in our public consumer surveys. Only one of the five principals in each of the four divisions that I manage looks after roads maintenance, and street works is only one aspect of that principal’s work. We cannot cover everything in our formal customer surveys, but we have gathered very good information about what people think about street works. We are aware that people do not like the disruption that is caused and that they do not like their roads being dug up and reinstated, even if it is done properly. They will say that their bitmac footpath, which has gone grey over the years, now has a black line in it because of a newly reinstated trench. People do not like that, and we are aware of that. We do not cover that in our biannual surveys any more, but we are aware of what people think about street works.

284. Ms Purvis: Apart from the annual survey, do you collate information on the nature of customer complaints, and do you track those complaints?

285. Mr Allister: We do, and they are included in our monthly monitor, which lets us know the main issues that people are complaining about. It does not give information on complaints about individual street works, but we know whether people are complaining about road maintenance, and we have a breakdown of those complaints.

286. Ms Purvis: What are the public liability implications when a claim is made for compensation for an accident that has resulted from a defective reinstatement? Who is liable for a defective reinstatement? Is it Roads Service or the utility?

287. Dr Murray: The utility is responsible. In general, such claims are passed directly to the utility company. Sometimes they come to Roads Service, and we then pass them on.

288. Ms Purvis: What system do you use to track defects, monitor them and ensure that they are repaired?

289. Dr Murray: The NISRANS keeps a full record of all street works in the Province. Whenever we carry out an inspection, the results go into the NISRANS, and any defects are reported automatically to the responsible utility.

290. Ms Purvis: What is the follow-up procedure to ensure that a defect is repaired?

291. Dr Murray: From the point at which we report the defect, the utility becomes responsible for it. The utility then has to issue a warranty notice to us, and it has to advise us when the work has been completed. Once it has done that, there is a two-year period during which it has to guarantee the works. If it does not do that — and as the report has indicated, sometimes a company does not — it remains responsible, and its two-year guarantee does not come into effect until it tells us that it has fixed the defect.

292. Ms Purvis: What follow-up action do you take? The follow-up action seems to be that the utility must inform you.

293. Dr Murray: To date, that has happened in a large percentage of cases. That is largely down to the fact that the NISRANS, as it was, did not flag that information up to us. It did not tell us that defect notices had not been responded to. We have corrected that, and we have introduced an enhancement to the system that will allow it to flag up those problems. The new system will do that.

294. Ms Purvis: Does Roads Service actively follow up on defect notices?

295. Dr Murray: We have to act within the limits of our resources, and for legal reasons, we have to be careful about following things up, but it will be simpler, and we will be able to bring problems to the attention of the utilities more quickly.

296. Mr Craig: Four issues have been highlighted in the evidence session, two of which referred to pieces of legislation, one concerned the resurfacing of roads, and the other dealt with fixed-penalty notices, which will affect the Department’s performance heavily. What are the likely implementation dates for those pieces of legislation? I ask that because the dates will affect when the Committee can examine those pieces of legislation again.

297. We require answers in writing about when the NISRANS update and the new procedures dealing with the checking of defective repairs will be implemented. Without that information, the Committee cannot make a judgement about when it should examine the issue again.

298. Dr Murray: The primary legislation is in place already. However, due to the code of practice, the secondary legislation is not. Getting the code of practice agreed and through the consultation process in England has proven to be problematic — the process has been delayed on a couple of occasions, and our implementation of the legislation is dependent on the completion of that process. We can say that we have a draft available and that we are ready to implement our regulatory impact assessments and public consultation, but we cannot begin until the consultation process in England has concluded.

299. The Chairperson: Will the process in England be completed in 2009? Have you asked your counterparts in England?

300. Dr Murray: They are still hopeful that the code of practice will be in place in 2009. However, the challenges are fundamental, so I cannot give a guarantee.

301. The Chairperson: When was the last time you asked them how soon it will be implemented?

302. Dr Murray: We are in regular contact with them. The last time we spoke was probably at an autumn meeting of the Joint Authorities Group, which we sit on.

303. The Chairperson: How long ago was that meeting?

304. Dr Murray: I think that it was last autumn.

305. The Chairperson: Does that mean that you have not been in contact with them since then to ask how soon the code will be implemented or whether they require any assistance?

306. Dr Murray: The last news that we heard was that there was to be a further legal challenge to the introduction of the code of practice in England.

307. The Chairperson: Do you think that the last time that you had a conversation with them was in autumn last year?

308. Dr Murray: Yes, but I will have to check.

309. The Chairperson: We want to receive updates on that situation, because we were hopeful that that the legislation would be introduced sooner rather than later in order that the mistakes that were made can be addressed.

310. Dr Murray: It is likely that the last time we spoke to our counterparts in England was more recent than last autumn.

311. Mr Priestly: We can give a more definitive reply about NISRANS. My understanding is that it will be introduced in May this year.

312. Dr Murray: The contract for the new NISRANS was awarded in December. Product development will take place before the system is rolled out to our divisions. The programme indicates that that will happen in May.

313. Mr G Robinson: I still have a bee in my bonnet about the consultation process. I do not want to be parochial again, but in the example that I gave, in my opinion, responsibility to inform affected businesses lay with either Roads Service or the former Water Service. However, to my knowledge, those businesses were not informed of the scheme. Who do you think should give the businesses the opportunity to question the nature of the work? Are those businesses entitled to compensation, for example? Much of the responsibility was left with the foreman of the contractor, who was the only point of contact for the businesses. It was only after we got involved that someone from the former Water Service visited the proprietors of the affected businesses and gave them a card or a telephone number. In my opinion, from the outset of the scheme, someone should have gone round all those businesses and spoken to the proprietors face to face so that they knew exactly what was happening. That way, there would have been a recognised contact in Roads Service or the former Water Service for those businesses if a problem arose.

314. Mr Priestly: We are still unclear as to whether this work was the responsibility of Roads Service or the former Water Service. In an earlier reply, Mr Allister pointed out that it is Roads Service’s standard practice to carry out consultation, do letter drops, engage with local businesses, explain what is going to happen, and seek to ameliorate any negative impacts that may occur.

315. We have also made it clear already that, irrespective of what form they take, such works undeniably have an impact on schools, communities and businesses. Hopefully, through consultation, we can work with people to ameliorate that impact as much as possible, but it cannot be removed entirely. It is clear-cut that no compensation is available to businesses whenever a public highway is opened up, and that is long-standing in law.

316. Mr G Robinson: At the very least, there should have been some form of contact, and the shopkeepers should have been told what was happening.

317. The Chairperson: Are you going to look into that?

318. Dr Murray: Yes.

319. Mr Priestly: We are not clear whether Roads Service was responsible for that piece of work. Of course, the Executive and the Assembly can change the law if they want; that is not our responsibility.

320. The Chairperson: You are going to conduct research on who was responsible for that piece of work and report back to us on the matter.

321. Mr Priestly: Yes; I have given an undertaking that I will do that.

322. Dr Murray: It is the scheme promoter’s responsibility to carry out public consultation. Therefore, if the scheme was largely the responsibility of NIW —

323. The Chairperson: I am sure that you will include that in your correspondence to Mr Robinson after you have done the initial research.

324. Mr Beggs: The previous Audit Office report highlighted some roads that had been patched repeatedly — patches were being put on top of patches, and money was seemingly being wasted. It seemed, for example, that Roads Service staff were almost permanently engaged in patching the Ballywillen Road near Glenoe in my constituency. I am pleased that some infrastructural work has been done on that road recently and that it is now being properly resurfaced.

325. How does Roads Service monitor the cost of the repeated patching a stretch of road? It should be identified at an early stage whether infrastructural work to upgrade a road surface is required, which could ultimately be cheaper than repeated patching.

326. Dr Murray: Roads Service has another computer system that deals with all our work planning. Inspectors examine each part of the road network in a routine cycle. They identify and record any safety defects and download those to the system. That produces a job card for a contractor, the contractor carries out the repairs, the information is fed to the system, and the contractor gets paid. That system produces management information so that we can tell what the patchwork costs on various roads have been. That is one of the main tools that we use to determine how to spend the resurfacing money.

327. Mr Beggs: You might need to keep a closer eye on what is happening.

328. Mr Priestly: I feel that this line of questioning is unfair. Mr Allister said already that his roads structural maintenance budget is underfunded, and he frequently speaks to me about that. We are the first to acknowledge that the roads network is a valuable public asset. However, there is objective evidence that the Assembly and the Executive are not giving us the money that is required to keep the network in the fit state that it needs to be in.

329. We do the best that we can with the resources that are made available to us, and if potholes appear in a road, they have to be patched as a matter of public safety. We are trying to run a high-standard professional roads network, so it is not in our interest to have roads with multiple patches. However, unless we are given the appropriate budget, we cannot afford to keep the roads network at the required standard. Therefore, we have to identify and prioritise the worst roads, and Andrew described the system that we use to do that. We do not want it to be that way, but the limited resources that we were given mean that that is the reality.

330. Mr Beggs: I simply said that there should be an earlier trigger to indicate that infrastructural work needs to be carried out on a particular stretch of road. If there are roads that have had to be patched repeatedly due to a lack of budget, you should be drawing that to the attention of the Committee.

331. Mr Priestly: We do — frequently.

332. Mr Wells: They do.

333. Mr Lunn: Returning to Dawn Purvis’s point about warranties and legal liability, Dr Murray said that in the event of a defect in the reinstatement of a major work, although the Department’s legal advice might be to stay clear of it and to leave the liability with the utility, it would, however, step in to carry out the work. Presumably, the Department would charge the utility for the work and require it to take on the liability.

334. Dr Murray: We would step in for a major safety defect, rather than for major works. Most of the defects that we discover are less than 10 mm deep, and we report those through to the contractors. When a defect is recognised as being a safety defect — one greater than 20 mm — we would step in to do the work, because we would not be prepared to leave a safety defect on the road network.

335. Mr Lunn: That is the point that I wished to clarify; it is the level of the defect and not the extent of the works that decide whether the Department steps in.

336. Dr Murray: Such circumstances are rare.

337. Mr Shannon: I intended to make this point the previous time that the witnesses appeared before the Committee. Often, whenever work is carried out on small rural roads, traffic must be detoured on to roads that might never have carried a Spar lorry or a diesel lorry. Consequently, that road’s edges are ruined. Although that is not DRD’s fault, the Department must bear the expense, so is there any way that you could fall back on the utilities and services to share the burden?

338. Dr Murray: A provision exists whereby if a scheme’s promoter causes a road to be subjected to abnormal traffic for a time, we can recover some costs. Generally, we would do that through negotiation.

339. Mr Shannon: Road edges are ruined and are atrocious, and you know the score; roads deteriorate quickly when vehicles drive along their grass verges. I shall leave that point with you.

340. The Chairperson: You will be glad to hear that there are no further questions. Today’s session has been useful; we have covered the Department’s progress in addressing the recommendations of the previous PAC report, and as I said at the beginning, the Committee appreciates the progress that has been made. The Public Accounts Committee’s questions are designed to get to the relevant information, and sometimes, members must ask them in different ways, so witnesses should not take offence. We deal with problems of this nature every day with our constituents; therefore, because such matters are continually in our faces and not buried away, we recognise that feelings can run high.

341. Mr Shannon: It happens all the time.

342. The Chairperson: Nevertheless, we place great store in the commitments that were given to us in the memorandum of response, and we expect them to be implemented fully. We will study today’s evidence carefully, and we will issue you a report on our findings. Mr Priestly, Mr Allister, and Dr Murray, thank you for attending.

Appendix 3

Correspondence

Chairperson’s Letter of 23 January 2009
to Mr Paul Preistley

Public Accounts Committee
Parliament Buildings
Room 371
Stormont
Belfast
BT4 3XX
Tel: (028) 9052 1208
Fax: (028) 9052 0366

23 January 2009

Mr Paul Priestley
Accounting Officer
Department of Regional Development
Clarence Court
10 - 18 Adelaide Street
Belfast
BT2 8GB

Dear Paul

Public Accounts Committee Evidence Session: 22 January 2009

At its evidence session on 22 January, the Public Accounts Committee agreed to write out and request further information in relation to the NIAO Report: “Road Openings by Utilities: Follow-up to Recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee". The Committee has requested responses to the following:

1. In Paragraph 1.2 of the NIAO Report, it states that as yet, national performance indicators have not been developed for street works and consequently Roads Service has been unable to benchmark its performance with Great Britain. Please provide updated information of expected dates of completion of the English model and an indication of the time the Department estimates it will take to align to any such indicators once they have been finalised.

2. Paragraph 2.4 of the Report notes that there have been large numbers of retrospective notifications of road openings by the Water Service, and provides details for the two periods 1995 – 2000 and 2003/2004 respectively. Please provide figures for subsequent years by utility.

3. Paragraph 2.6 of the Report notes that, since 2006, all substantial road works have been registered on the NISRANS. Please provide details of the value of works considered as substantial for each year since 2006.

4. Please provide terms of reference for the group comprising senior departmental officials and NI Water officials, including names and titles of group members and frequency of scheduled meetings.

5. Please provide an updated estimate of the date of implementation of the new secondary code of practice legislation awaited from England.

6. Please provide confirmation of the date the new NISRANS system is due and a summary timetable for subsequent follow-up action.

7. During the evidence session the Committee was informed that the current state of Castle Lane was due to an understanding that DSD was to re-pave the whole area. Hence, the surface in place was only temporary. How long has it been since the first temporary instalment in this area, and what is the timescale for the DSD project?

8. In addition to the above, Mr Allister undertook to investigate details surrounding a number of constituency issues raised by Members. I would ask that you provide the information promised to the individual Members, and copy the response to the Clerk, Ms Alison Ross.

I would be grateful if we could have your response by Monday, 9 February 2009.

Yours sincerely

Paul Maskey Signature

Paul Maskey
Chairperson
Public Accounts Committee

Correspondence of 9 February 2009
from Mr Paul Priestley

Annex A

Question 1

In Paragraph 1.2 of the NIAO Report, it states that as yet, national performance indicators have not been developed for street works and consequently Roads Service has been unable to benchmark its performance with Great Britain. Please provide updated information of expected dates of completion of the English model and an indication of the time the Department estimates it will take to align to any such indicators once they have been finalised.

Response

Roads Service is a member of the Local Roads Joint Authorities Group (JAG) for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Roads Service Street Works manager is a director of the group, which is made up of over 200 local authorities in the UK, together with the Department for Transport.

This Group and the National Traffic Managers Forum, along with an independent consultant have recently formed a working group to examine the issue of performance management including performance indicators. Their work will be informed by work carried out to date by JAG on performance indicators. On completion of the work Roads Service will then adopt agreed key performance indicators that are relative to the Northern Ireland roads infrastructure.

The Group is due to meet formally for the first time in February/March 2009 and will agree at that meeting a timescale for the development of proposals.

Question 2

Paragraph 2.4 of the Report notes that there have been large numbers of retrospective notifications of road openings by the Water Service, and provides details for the two periods 1995–2000 and 2003-2004 respectively. Please provide figures for subsequent years by utility.

Response

The table below shows the number of retrospective notices by Utility for each of the last four complete financial years.

Utility	Financial Year
2004/05	2005/06	2006/07	2007/08
British Telecom (NI)	533	264	509	426
Cable and Wireless (NI)	0	1	1	0
Northern Ireland Electricity	1,019	1,082	919	901
NTL (NI)	564	305	128	216
Phoenix Natural Gas	1,456	871	1400	294
Rivers	1	2	2	1
Water Service*	23,878	20,846	16,335	13,142
Firmus Energy	N/A	25	60	10
Bord Gais Eireann	39	N/A	39	0
Eircom	N/A	N/A	1	33

Note: These figures also include Emergency and Urgent Works, which are allowed, by the legislation, to be retrospective.

* Historical underfunding in NIW’s infrastructure is the major contributing factor for retrospective road opening notifications. These emergency and urgent openings are necessary in order to repair and / or replace burst watermains, leakage, defective manholes and collapsed sewers. Typically these jobs are completed in less than a day. Therefore, it is possible for work to be completed before receipt of the notice.

Question 3

Paragraph 2.6 of the Report notes that, since 2006, all substantial road works have been registered on the NISRANS. Please provide details of the value of works considered as substantial for each year since 2006.

Response

The value of substantial works for 2006-07 was £31.6m and consisted of 246 Schemes.

The value of substantial works for 2007-08 was £41.7m and consisted of 345 Schemes.

Question 4

Please provide terms of reference for the group comprising senior departmental officials and NI Water officials, including names and titles of group members and frequency of scheduled meetings.

Response

The Terms of Reference for the group are that the group should meet quarterly to review:

road openings and the quality of reinstatements;
roads drainage;
compensation claims;
communications; and

The terms of reference for this group would not include discussion on the policy and shareholder matters that Water Policy Division and the Shareholder Unit in DRD have responsibility for.

Copies of the agendas for the meetings in August and November 2008 and February 2009 can be found at Annex B.

The list of attendees is as follows:

DRD Officials

Lian Patterson (Deputy Secretary DRD – Chairperson)
Geoff Allister (Chief Executive - Roads Service)
Andrew Murray (Director of Network Services - Roads Service)
Stephen Murphy (Head of Central Claims Unit)
Gary Fair (Director - Shareholder Unit)
John Mills (Director - Water Policy Division)
Stuart Wightman (Head of Environment Team - Water Policy Division)
Anne Armstrong (Principal Information Officer - Press Office)
Eilís Ferguson (Staff Officer - Water Policy Division)
Ian Maxwell (Head of Communications - Water Policy Division)

NI Water Officials

Chris Mellor (Chairman and Acting Chief Executive)
William Duddy - Head of Single Bill Project for NIW
David Dangerfield - Acting Director of Operations for NIW
Pat McParland (Head of Communications)
James Mitchell (Head of Networks)
Ronan Larkin (Head of Finance and Regulation)
Mark Ellesmere (Company Secretary and Head of Legal Services)

Question 5

Please provide an updated estimate of the date of implementation of the new secondary code of practice legislation awaited from England

Response

Based on the latest information (6 February 2009) it has been established that challenges within the consultation process in England have resulted in delays with the introduction of Code of Practice.

The overall implementation process is now some eight months behind schedule.

Latest estimates indicate that it may be mid 2010 before the Code of Practice legislation is approved in England.

Question 6

Please provide confirmation of the date the new NISRANS system is due and a summary timetable for subsequent follow-up action?

Response

The new NISRANS System is currently scheduled to go live on the 4 May 2009.

It is anticipated that the new system will be in use throughout Northern Ireland from that date.

As regards a timetable for follow up action, I note from page 51 of the draft Hansard that this was a reference to the timetable the Committee may wish to set for following up performance on road openings in the future.

Question 7

During the evidence session the Committee was informed that the current state of Castle Lane was due to an understanding that DSD was to re-pave the whole area. Hence, the surface in place was only temporary. How long has it been since the first temporary instalment in this area, and what is the timescale for the DSD project?

Response

DSD notified the various Utilities in April 2006 that they were examining the possibility of carrying out Public Realm works in what they termed Area 1. They included an overall plan for the streets involved which included Castle Lane.

On contract acceptance the contractor’s original programme suggested a proposed start date of August 2007 and end date June 2009. Castle Lane had been scheduled into the public realm works programme for August 2008. The Utilities commenced what is termed “pre-proofing" of their systems in the overall area, including Castle Lane, to assess whether the condition of their services would last the life expectancy of the new public realm scheme. The first pre-proofing notification on NISRANS which resulted in a temporary reinstatement in Castle Lane was notified by NI Water in April 2007.

Due to the slower progress on other streets, the Castle Lane works were delayed and commenced on 12 January 2009.

The project is scheduled for completion by September/ October 2009.

Question 8

In addition to the above, Mr Allister undertook to investigate details surrounding a number of constituency issues raised by Members. I would ask that you provide the information promised to the individual Members and copy the response to the Clerk, Ms Alison Ross.

Response

Mr Allister will respond to constituency related issues separately.

Annex B

DRD NIW Bilateral Meeting
Wednesday 20 August 2008

Agenda

1. Street Works by NI Water

(i) Co-ordination with Roads Service/other utilities

(ii) Implications of NIAO Report

(iii) Removal of concession for private connections to NI Water sewers and water mains

2. Road drainage

3. Claims handling

4. Handling residual personnel cases

5. Recent interruptions to supply

6. Joint billing

7. Risks to stability of bills

8. Communications strategy - liaison, future events, response to review

9. Processing of answers to AQs and other correspondence

10. Consultations on proposed Water Quality Regulations and Water Fittings Regulations

Additional ‘raw water’ monitoring requirements for NIW

11. Water Framework Directive - reporting requirements for Article 5 and Article 9 compliance

12. Any other business

13. Date of next meeting

DRD NIW Bilateral Meeting
Wednesday 19 November 2008 at 15.00 – Ford Room, 7th Floor,
Clarence Court

Agenda

1. Note of previous meeting – 20 August 2008

2. Street Works by NI Water

(i) DRD Roads Service to report on NIW reinstatement performance;

(ii) DRD Roads Service to provide update re coring developments;

(iii) DRD Roads Service to clarify how coring should be carried out and outline how roads should be reinstated to meet the required standard;

(iv) DRD Roads Service and NIW to clarify recommendations in Northern Ireland Audit Office report and outline which recommendations need to be taken forward;

(v) Update from DRD Roads Service on NIW’s level of non-notification of work;

(vi) Update from NIW and DRD Roads Service re removal of concession for private connections to NI Water sewers and water mains; and

(vii) Discuss further the policy and operational aspects re who is responsible for water and sewerage laying/roads digging and reinstatement of roads (especially iro ancillary work).

3. Road drainage

Update from DRD Roads Service and NIW.

4. Claims Handling

Update from DRD Central Claims Unit (Stephen Murphy) and NIW (Mark Ellesmere) re resolving areas of concern.

5. Interruptions to supply

Action: NIW to provide information to WPD - completed.

6. Joint billing

Action: WPD (John Mills) to clarify position - completed.

7. Risks to stability of bills

Action: NIW and WPD to discuss risks - ongoing.

8. Communications Strategy

(i) NIW to confirm they have shared their core script with DRD; and

(ii) Update from Gary Fair (Shareholder Unit) re discussions at the Quarterly Shareholder meeting of Monday 10 November.

9. Processing of answers to AQs and other correspondence

(i) Update from WPD (John Mills) re Memorandum of Understanding (MOU); and

(ii) Presentation from Ian Maxwell (WPD) on the procedures between DRD and NIW in relation to Ministerial correspondence.

10. Floodline Arrangements – NIW perspective

11. Water Quality Regulations

Update from John Mills (WPD).

12. NIW information requirements for WFD reporting

WPD to outline requirements.

13. Any other business.

Update from Gary Fair (Shareholder Unit) re challenges to procurement procedures.

14. Date of next meeting

DRD/NIW BI-LATERAL MEETING
05 FEBRUARY 2009 14.30, FORD ROOM, CLARENCE COURT

AGENDA

Agenda Item	Introduced by	Paper reference
1. Note of previous meeting (19 Nov 2008)	Lian Patterson
2. Coring – NIW / RS - Update on information sharing from NIRAUC to NIW - Outcome of RS workshop on coring	Andrew Murray
3. Non-notification – RS - Update on numbers from utilities - discuss further the reasons so process can be changed as necessary	Andrew Murray
4. Removal of Concession – RS - Update	Andrew Murray
5. Road’s Drainage – RS - Update	Andrew Murray
6. Claims Handling – CCU / NIW - Update	Stephen Murphy
7. Floodline – NIW / RS - Update	Andrew Murray
8. Communications – WPD - Early warning of press releases - Update on common lines for Press Releases	John Mills
9. Billing and data – WPD / NIW - Joint billing/update and funding - Non-domestic billing arrangements with LPS - Data issues (NIW) - Steria (NIW)	John Mills
10. Charges Scheme – WPD / NIW - Efficiency, non-domestic charging arrangements, etc. - NIW costs 2009/2010	John Mills
11. Ministerial Guidance – WPD - Cost estimation - Critical Infrastructure	John Mills
12. AOB	Lian Patterson
13. Date of Next Meeting	Lian Patterson

Clerk’s Letter of 13 February 2009
to Mr Paul Preistley

Public Accounts Committee
Parliament Buildings
Room 371
Stormont
Belfast
BT4 3XX
Tel: (028) 9052 1208
Fax: (028) 9052 0366

13 February 2009

Mr Paul Priestley
Accounting Officer
Department of Regional Development
Clarence Court
10 - 18 Adelaide Street
Belfast
BT2 8GB

Dear Paul

Road Openings by Utilities: Follow-up to Recommendations of the
Public Accounts Committee

Thank you for your letter of 9 February providing the additional information requested on foot of our hearing on the above report.

Following consideration of your response, there are two of the questions on which we would be grateful for further clarification.

1. At question 2, you provide details of retrospective notices by Utility for each of the last four financial years. We note, however, that the figures combine Emergency and Urgent Works, which are allowed by legislation to be retrospective, with other late notifications. Paragraph 2.4 of the C&AG’s report however, relates to late notifications other than Emergency and Urgent Works. We would therefore be grateful if you could provide these figures separately to us, as they are quite different in nature;

2. In response to Question 8, you note that Mr Allister will respond on constituency matters raised during the evidence session to the respective Committee members, with a copy to the Clerk. I acknowledge receipt of a copy of the information supplied in connection with the first of these - Beechmount Avenue (identified by The Chair, Mr Paul Maskey). However, we would still seek further information on the lack of consultation of businesses at Ballykelly (as raised by Mr Robinson). I would be grateful for confirmation of who was responsible for these street works, what consultation of businesses was undertaken in these cases and the nature of that consultation.

I would be grateful if we could have your response by Tuesday 17 February 2009.

Yours sincerely

Alison Ross Signature

Alison Ross
Clerk
Public Accounts Committee

Correspondence of 13 February 2009
from Mr Paul Priestley

PAC Response 2009 - Nisrans Retrospective Notices by Worktype by Financial Year

Correspondence of 12 February 2009
from Mr Geoff Allister

Correspondence of 13 February 2009
from Mr Geoff Allister

Appendix 4

List of Witnesses who gave Oral Evidence to the Committee

List of Witnesses who gave
Oral Evidence to the Committee

1. Mr Paul Priestley, Accounting Officer, Department for Regional Development.

2. Mr Geoff Allister, Chief Executive, Roads Service.

3. Dr Andrew Murray, Director of Network Services, Roads Service.

4. Mr John Dowdall CB, Comptroller and Auditor General, Northern Ireland Audit Office.

5. Mr David Thomson, Treasury Officer of Accounts, Department of Finance and Personnel.

Session 2008/2009

Ninth Report

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE

Report on Road Openings by Utilities

Together with the Minutes of Proceedings of the Committee relating to the Report and the Minutes of Evidence

Ordered by The Public Accounts Committee to be printed 26 February 2009 Report: 33/08/09R (Public Accounts Committee)

Membership and Powers

Table of Contents

Report

Appendix 1:

Appendix 2:

Appendix 3:

Appendix 4:

List of Abbreviations used in the Report

Executive Summary

Introduction

Improving consultation and minimising disruption

Reinstating roads to the required standard

Operating a robust and effective reporting regime

Summary of Recommendations

Improving consultation and minimising disruption

Reinstating roads to the required standard

Operating a Robust and Effective Reporting Regime

Introduction

Opening remarks

Recommendation 1

Recommendation 2

Improving consultation and minimising disruption

Inadequate consultation

Recommendation 3

Managing customer relations

Recommendation 4

Recommendation 5

The need for timely notification of street works

Recommendation 6

Recommendation 7

Reinstating roads to the required standard

Continuing to improve overall standards of reinstatement

Recommendation 8

High amenity town centres

Recommendation 9

Small rural roads

Recommendation 10

Improving the performance of NI Water

Recommendation 11

Follow-up of reinstatement defects

Recommendation 12

Operating a robust and effective reporting regime

Increasing the number of Category A inspections

Recommendation 13

Issuing improvement notices

Recommendation 14

Performance monitoring and reporting

Recommendation 15

Minutes of Proceedingsof the Committee Relatingto the Report

Thursday, 22 January 2009 Senate Chamber, Parliament Buildings

3. Evidence on the NIAO Report ‘Road Openings by Utilities: Follow-up to Recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee’.

Thursday, 26 February 2009 Room 144, Parliament Buildings

6. Consideration of the Committee’s Draft Report on Road Openings by Utilities: Follow-up to Recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee.

Minutes of Evidence

22 January 2009

Correspondence

Chairperson’s Letter of 23 January 2009to Mr Paul Preistley

Public Accounts Committee Evidence Session: 22 January 2009

Correspondence of 9 February 2009 from Mr Paul Priestley

Annex A

Question 1

Response

Question 2

Response

Question 3

Response

Question 4

Response

DRD Officials

NI Water Officials

Question 5

Response

Question 6

Response

Report on Road
Openings by Utilities

Together with the Minutes of Proceedings of the Committee
relating to the Report and the Minutes of Evidence

Ordered by The Public Accounts Committee to be printed 26 February 2009
Report: 33/08/09R (Public Accounts Committee)

List of Abbreviations used
in the Report

Improving consultation and
minimising disruption

Reinstating roads to the
required standard

Operating a robust and effective
reporting regime

Minutes of Proceedings
of the Committee Relating
to the Report

Thursday, 22 January 2009
Senate Chamber, Parliament Buildings

Thursday, 26 February 2009
Room 144, Parliament Buildings

Chairperson’s Letter of 23 January 2009
to Mr Paul Preistley

Correspondence of 9 February 2009
from Mr Paul Priestley

DRD NIW Bilateral Meeting
Wednesday 20 August 2008

DRD NIW Bilateral Meeting
Wednesday 19 November 2008 at 15.00 – Ford Room, 7th Floor,
Clarence Court

DRD/NIW BI-LATERAL MEETING
05 FEBRUARY 2009 14.30, FORD ROOM, CLARENCE COURT

Clerk’s Letter of 13 February 2009
to Mr Paul Preistley

Road Openings by Utilities: Follow-up to Recommendations of the
Public Accounts Committee

Correspondence of 13 February 2009
from Mr Paul Priestley

Correspondence of 12 February 2009
from Mr Geoff Allister

Correspondence of 13 February 2009
from Mr Geoff Allister

List of Witnesses who gave
Oral Evidence to the Committee