Speeches by Greenwood.

“One of the specific purposes of HAUC is to share good practice and guidance about what works. That is from the people who are doing it day in, day out. We rely on HAUC to provide some of that guidance, specifically as practitioners, because they can share what works and come together to agree it.”

“It is still fairly early days in terms of seeing how it is operating. As I already said, it is about trying to incentivise good behaviour, and there is also a financial impact from it. All companies began on either a 30% or 50% sample rate, depending on their performance in the previous year. The information that we ha…”

“I should just add that, interestingly, not every utility company operates to the same standard in different places. There is variation. They will be using different contractors in different areas. I am not going to name any utility companies, because I will upset them, but one might be performing well in one area but n…”

“As I understand it, we have moved from a position where there used to be unlimited numbers of reinspections to a situation where there are two and then it goes into an escalation process. The thing that we want is not for utility companies particularly to be paying fines. What we want them to do is to do a decent job t…”

“They seem reluctant to do so.”

“There is an escalation process already written into the regulations, which is that, after two failed inspections, there is a three-stage process, which involves committees at a local and regional level, so there can be escalation.”

“It depends on what motivates utility companies. My own experience of seeing where you have a poorly performing broadband provider that comes into your area and gets a lot of bad press is that it does motivate them to say that they are going to do something about it. You can use that escalation process to hold people to…”

“I am very willing to look at further developments, and we welcome the work that the Committee is doing on looking into this. If there are recommendations for how it could be done more effectively, we will certainly be very happy to consult with local authorities and utility companies to see whether there is a better wa…”

“If local authorities want to provide evidence in relation to the need to increase, we have heard that. The request from the Department has been for further evidence from local authorities in order for us to look at whether that would be a reasonable thing to do. Whenever we put cost into this, it is ultimately going to…”

“Inspection fees are for undertaking the inspection. You are going to have to undertake the inspection, whether you find a defect or not. They are higher if you are required to pay for more inspections.”

“Yes.”

“I saw the evidence provided by the commissioner in Scotland. He said that it is the road authorities who carry out the coring, and he operates in a co-ordinating role. There are local authorities in England that do coring, and the Committee heard evidence to that effect. There is nothing to prevent there being some co-…”

“In the way that the guidance is set up, it sets out how to do coring, and local authorities would understand the value of that. Anthony, I do not know whether you want to comment.”

“That would have required us to carry out a further consultation, so we decided to act when we had the opportunity to do so.”

“I am going to let you have a bash as well. I am concerned about performance if local authorities are telling us that utility companies are not performing well enough. The scheme that we have has developed over time precisely to do what you are asking, which is to say, “We do not think that it is performing as well as i…”

“The obvious question is about who is going to pay for it. As I understand it, in Scotland, the road authorities are doing the coring, but there is national co-ordination. In England, there are some local authorities that have coring programmes. We heard that Salford does within Greater Manchester, as does another local…”

“Yes, but they may be wishing that DfT would decide that we were going to pay for a national coring programme that would be over and above the funding that local authorities receive, which might be somewhat wishful thinking at this point.”

“I am not going to comment on section 81, because, surprisingly, I cannot pick out of my head where that is. I am going to turn to Anthony for that one.”

“There has been a big increase in telecommunications works, and a lot of new operators in the space, so it is about making sure that they are part of this. I do not know whether you can set out a little more clearly what the specific problems are.”

“In general terms, what is always very difficult to legislate for is good relationships. Where this works well is where you will have utility companies and the managers of the highway authority having regular conversations, where they pick up the phone and talk to each other. In some cases, you have people who are co-lo…”