2022

RH435 - Street Lighting Trimming and Dimming 290922

A member authority is reviewing the operation of their street-lighting

Please can you supply the following information:

•              Do you dim any or all of your street lighting? Yes, lights are set to dim to 60% between 10pm and 6am.

If yes,

• did you consult prior to roll out? No, as the County Council who have the majority of lighting in the area had installed lights with dimming following consultation and our decision was to install the same dimming for consistency.
• how was this consultation carried out? &
• with which stakeholders?

Do you trim any or all of your street lighting? No

If yes,

• did you consult prior to roll out?
• how was this consultation carried out? &
• with which stakeholders?

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RH433 - Public Rights of Way 290722

A member authority has carried out a survey on a historic track to determine whether it should be turned into a public right of way.

They feel the evidence is strong enough for it to be taken forward to look at modifying as a new public right of way.

The track is private but the landowners (currently) have not provided enough evidence that public access has been discouraged or prohibited over at least a twenty year period.

•              Do you have experience of a similar circumstance?

•              What process did you follow to resolve?

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RH431 - Environmental Weight Restrictions 260722

A member Authority is seeking to introduce environmental weight limit restrictions on the highway.

The objective is to channel HGV movements away from rural and lightly residential roads.

•              Do you have an existing policy you can share?

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RH0437 - Reviewing parking charges for off street car parks - 111122    

This local authority is reviewing its parking charges in their off street car parks and would like to know if any other member authority can advise whether increasing the level of parking tariffs has had an adverse impact on vehicle occupancy in the car parks where the charges have been increased?

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RH0436 - Gritter Drivers CPC – 261022

A member authority is reviewing the use of Gritter Drivers

Currently all their winter maintenance drivers hold a drivers CPC

•              Do you require all your drivers to hold CPC?

•              If not, how do you interpret the guidance for those whose principal role is not one of driving?

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RH0432 - Equality of access of the high street by partial or full pedestrianisation             

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RH0429 - Charging policy - Attachments to Street Lighting columns – 210722

A member authority is reviewing it charging policy for arranging attachments to lighting columns, for hanging baskets, CCTV cameras etc. by third parties.

The charge usually covers the structural testing of the lighting column and admin.

Please can you provide the following information:

•              Does your Authority charge and at what level?

•              Is the guidance or policy published and if so can supply a link? ( or document)

RH0428 - Warning the public of weed spraying in public spaces and highways – 180722

This local authority is looking for information on what other local authorities do to warn people of weed spraying in public spaces and highways (examples of signs or other means of communication), and how long these messages are displayed for – before, during, after treatment?

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RH0427 - Benchmark information for Highways and Drainage service officers – 120722

A member authority is looking for benchmark information regarding salaries for Highway and Drainage Operatives - specifically:

•              What pay grades are used for Senior Highway and Drainage Operatives

•              What paygrades are used for Highway and Drainage Operatives.

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RH0426 - Pavement Licences - Sitting out 010722

A member authority is reviewing the sitting out provision as the Business and Planning Act 2020 (Pavement Licences) (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2021 will expire on 30 September 2022.

They request the following information:

1 . Are you looking to revise your current sitting out licencing provision?

2. Will you revert to pre pandemic approach using section 115A(1) Highways Act 1980?

3. Do you charge annually or seasonally?

4. Do you operate a tiered system, charging per table, chair or square meterage occupied etc?

5. Have you designated premium areas, for sitting out provisions, i.e. courtyards, squares, harbours, pedestrianised zones etc?

6. How is your costing structured, administration, enforcement cost as part of your new application and renewal cost?

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RH0425 - Maintenance Service Technology 280622

A member authority is seeking to adopted paperless technology to support frontline Maintenance Operations.

They want to facilitate performance management, service delivery & KPI’s.

Please can you supply the following information:

•              Which software programmes do they use and for what purposes, with particular interest on how project documents are shared and how timesheets are processed?

•              Any installation costs and running costs?

•              Are the systems used easy to update, amend, add new streets, asset inventory, etc?

•              What types of In-cab technology / PDA device do authorities use?

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RH0424 - Silica Dust from Compacted Stone Tracks 220622

A member authority is being questioned by residents on the health effects of dust generated by laying granular materials

More specifically the health effects of DoT (Department of Transport) Type 1 granular aggregate sub-base during road construction or to form a cost effective surface on unadopted tracks used by vehicles

•              Do you identify silica dust a potential health risk?

•              Does your working practice identify and mitigate that risk?

•              Is the risk (if any) part of a more general road laying assessment?

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RH0423 - Highway Patch repairs 090622

A member authority is reviewing its patch repair methodology

Please can you supply the following information:

•              Do you use hot-box technology?

o             If so – who is the manufacturer/supplier?

•              What is your favoured pothole/defect repair method?

•              Do you favour one method for urban over rural?"

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RH0422 APSE Network Query: Passive Safe Equipment - streetlights & signs 170522

A member authority is developing their policy on the use of the use of passive safe equipment in streetlights and illuminated signs.

Please can you provide the following:

•              Details of the type of post (high energy, low energy etc)?

•              Disconnection system in use?

•              Any feedback on performance?

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RH0421 - Highways Procurement- 070422

APSE is seeking to establish any current procurement issues across highways, street lighting and winter maintenance.

If you have experienced, delays, inflated prices, lack of tenders or failures in procurement frameworks etc, we’d like to know.

•              What is the product/service causing difficulty?

•              What is the main issue?

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RH0421 - Highways Procurement- 070422

APSE is seeking to establish any current procurement issues across highways, street lighting and winter maintenance

If you have experienced, delays, inflated prices, lack of tenders or failures in procurement frameworks etc, we’d like to know

• What is the product/service causing difficulty?
• What is the main issue?

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RH0421 – Highways out of Hours service – 110322

A member authority is reviewing their Highways out of hours service, in particular, how out of hours calls are handled

Please can you assist with answers to the following:

• How do you currently carry out your call handling for your highways out of hours service?
  • Do calls go direct to Highways officers/ contractors?
  • Are calls handled by a police service?
  • Or internal / external call centre?
  • Do you use an automated system?
• Do you share this process with any other services within your authority?
• What hours do you operate this process for?

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RH0418 – Adoption of Housing Footway Assets – 180222

A member authority is considering adopting as Highways Assets, the whole of the footways, communal spaces and hard standings within Council owned and managed housing estates.

Historically the Council has committed funding from the Housing Revenue Account on an annual basis for both reactive and planed maintenance of footways and associated assets.

• Were there any legislative constraints that needed to be taken into account in the adoption process?
• How did you limit any negative impact on the condition of the existing adopted highway network?
• What financial arrangements were put in place for the long term funding of the increased size of highway work?
• Looking back, what lessons were learnt from the adoption of the housing footways?
• What advantages/disadvantages have been identified from the adoption process?

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RH0417 – Disabled Persons Parking Policy (DPPP) – 180222

A member authority is looking to introduce a Disabled Persons Parking Policy (DPPP).

This will primarily focus on requests from residents.

Please can you answer the following:

• Does your Authority have a DPPP?
• If so how many applications for a space do you get a year?
• Since the introduction of your policy, how may how many disabled bays have you introduced?
• How many applications have you turned down?
• Have there been any issues with the bays since installation i.e. disputes/complaints?
• Do you have a copy of your policy you can share?

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RH0416 – Amenity/street lighting maintenance – 040222

A District Council member is seeking to let a contract for the maintenance and occasional replacement of street lighting around car parks, civic and community buildings.

They wish to determine how other authorities manage this issue:

• Do you have a specific lighting contract?
  • If so with whom e.g. County council, contractor etc?
• If otherwise, how do you manage your lighting commitments?
• Do you have a contract specification and possibly a schedule of rates you can share for maintenance and replacement?
• Do you have an independent contractor carry out the safety and electrical checks on your lighting columns or do you use the same contractor?

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RH0415 – Highway defect repairs – 010222

A member authority is reviewing the quality of their safety defect repairs.

Please supply the following information

1. Which methods do you primarily employ to complete carriageway defect repairs?
   • Traditional repair using hot materials
   • Traditional repair using cold lay materials
   • Infrared/thermal repairs
   • Other
2. Are operatives formally trained to a nationally recognised standard? and if so what is it? (e.g NRSWA)
3. What material(s) do you primarily use for the majority of repairs?
   • Hot
   • Cold
   • A mixture of the two
     • If hot how do you ensure material temperature is maintained throughout the shift? For example hot boxes, insulated vehicles etc.
4. Do you measure the quality of your safety defect repairs and if so how?

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RH0414 – Ballast/Driver Failures on LED Lanterns – 010222

A member authority is attempting to determine the failure rate on ballast/drivers for LED lighting, having now upgraded most of their existing street lighting to LED

Please can you provide detail on the following:

• Who is the manufacture of your lanterns? e.g. Philips / Urbis etc?
• Who is the manufacturer of the drivers/ballast if different?
• Do you collate failure rates for drivers/ballast?
  • if so what is the failure rate to date? (percentage total and or failures/annum)

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RH0413 – capitalising staff costs – 280122

A member authority are looking to benchmark what peer authorities do when capitalising staff costs and have the following questions:

• Do you capitalise costs incurred as a result of staff spending time on capital projects?
• Do you have a Council wide capitalisation policy/procedure for capitalising staff time?
  • If yes, how do you determine the hours to be capitalised?
  • If yes, what tools if any do you use to record this?
  • If yes, can you please provide a copy or link to your published policy?
• Do you capitalise scheme development costs, where an asset is subsequently created or enhanced?
  • If yes, what project milestone triggers the capitalisation of these development costs?
• Where a project spans multiple financial years, how do you deal with development costs incurred in previous financial years?
• On average what percentage of staff time do you capitalise each year?

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RH0412 – Developers working on the adopted Highway – 170122

A member authority is seeking to establish a policy to inform developers who wish to work on the adopted highway, especially on major schemes on traffic sensitive routes

Do you:

• require the contactor to be on an approved contractor register?
• supervision by a Local Authority representative etc?

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RH0410 – Joint Sealing - Carriageway Defects – 040122

A member authority is interested to know the processes others use for sealing of joints associated with routine highway defect reinstatement

Also, the particular systems/products applied for edge sealing and over-banding.

Please can you supply the following information:

• What sealing products do you use applied (hot or cold)?
• Do you have any tangible data obtained on the performance of the elected application?
• Have you moved away from either hot-applied or cold methods completely, and what were the reasons for this decision?