Digging a hole, don't dig there, dig it elsewhere !

"...When along comes this bloke in a bowler which he lifted and scratched his head.

Well he looked down the hole, poor demented soul and he said. Do you mind if I make a suggestion? Don’t dig there, dig it elsewhere. Your digging it round and it ought to be square. The shape of it’s wrong, it’s much much too long. And you can’t put hole where a hole don’t belong..."

Younger (!) readers may not be familiar with the lyrics to the Hole in the Ground song made famous by Bernard Cribbins but it seemed apt  for the subject of this blog posting.

One of my frequent cycle routes into Manchester City Centre takes me along Charles Street past the (very fine) Lass O'Gowrie pub and my return trip often goes down Princess Street and turns right back onto Charles Street.  There used to be two fine specimens of Advanced Stop Lines (ASLs) - otherwise known as big green boxes - at the Charles Street / Princess Street junction. That was until some contractor, working for one of the utility companies, came along and dug up the road and unfortunately did not seem to feel the necessity to return the cycling infrastructure to its former glory.  

Now it is very nice of Manchester council tax payers to fund the development of cycling infrastructure - but it seems a little strange that Manchester Council should have to spend more money repairing the damage caused by contractors working for privatised utility companies (Ed... does that count as a hidden subsidy?).

Well according to the Department for Transport (DfT) document "Specification for the Reinstatement of Openings in Highways: Second Edition 2002" (who said we were sad!).  Section 6.4.5.4 Coloured Surfacings states that : "Coloured surfacings used to highlight highway features such as speed warnings, bus or cycle lanes, ‘gateways’ etc. shall be permanently reinstated using like materials of equivalent type and similar colour, subject to the following requirements: 

a) Where the coloured surfacing is overlaid onto a road surface, a coloured overlay shall be applied to the same thickness. 
b) Where the coloured surfacing is laid full depth, a coloured material shall be laid to the same thickness, wherever possible and practical. Where it is not possible or practical, the coloured surfacing material shall be reinstated by agreement.

c) Some high friction surfacing materials that are coloured have a limited manufacturer’s guarantee and may be subject to wear and abrasion during the guarantee period. However, the reinstated area shall not be inferior to the adjoining surface during the guarantee period."

Which seems a very long winded way of saying - put it back as you found it!


So bearing in mind the above snippets... I sent an email (with the above photos) to Manchester City Council Highways Services asking if they had the powers to request (dare we say - order?) the utility company / contractors to repair the damage and reinstate the ASLs.... and received a very quick response saying that they had initiated a "streetworks defect" order - which is all very encouraging although there was no indication of how long one of these would take to come into effect.

However, in November 2010 in a report to the "Communities and Neighbourhoods Overview and Scrutiny Committee" the Interim Head of Services stated in Section 2.2. Inspection frequency that: "The frequency of inspection is based primarily on the level of use and importance of the section of highway in question. In general, all highwainspected at six monthly intervals however, principal routes are inspected at three monthly intervals and the City Centre and busy parts of district centres are inspected on a monthly basis." [Emphasis added]

Well, I think it is fair to argue that Princess Street would be classed as a busy part of the City Centre but it seemed more than one month had elapsed since the vandalism of the ASLs. 
So I wrote back to the nice Council officer and asked for the following information: a) when was the work on the highway, which resulted in the degrading of the ASLs, originally carried out, and b) which utility company/contractor carried out that work.

Not exactly asking for state secrets so was rather surprised to receive the following response:

"I am advised that this information cannot be made available. I think it is a question of who owns this data. It's been suggested that you could consider putting in a request under the Freedom of Information Act, so perhaps this route is worth pursuing?"

Why such a bureaucratic and secretive response?  Is MCC's Highways Services seriously arguing that, despite holding details of all the organisations which are authorised to carry out road and street works in Manchester and presumably authorising when said companies can dig up the roads Manchester, that they do not "own"  this data ! 

Pursue it?  Indeed I will... updates as they wend their way to my inbox.

But next time you see cycling infrastructure that has been damaged by utility company contractors why not drop a line to your Council's Highway Services and remind them that they can (and should) be requiring the contractors to "put it back the way they found it".

Lets hope it does not end up like the last verse of Bernard Cribben's song...."Well there we were, discussing this hole. Hole in the ground so big and sort of round it was. It’s not there now, the ground’s all flat. And beneath it is the bloke in the bowler hat. And that’s that."


Update (1st July 2011)

Well you will just have to hold breath a little longer for the MCC Highways response to the Freedom of Information Act request submitted on 3rd June which sought the following information. 

"For the Charles Street / Princess Street junction area:

a) when (date) was the work on the highway, which resulted in the the damage to the Advanced Stop Lines (ASLs), originally carried out?

b) which utility company/contractor was authorised to carry out that work?

c) were the completed road works inspected by Manchester City Council staff, and if so,

i) on what dates were the inspection(s) undertaken?
ii) what information was recorded as a result of any inspections?
iii) what actions, if any, were initiated as a result of the inspections?


Well the 20 working days period (as outlined in the FOI legislation) for responding to FOI requests was up yesterday but what I received was the following:


"Thank you for you recent Freedom of Information Request regarding works on Charles Street / Princess Street.   Unfortunately we have been unable to complete your request with the time scale previously given.  Once we are in receipt of all information we will then be in a position to respond and l will contact you further."

Now, the FoI legislation does allow public bodies to take more time to respond to information requests (as long as they let you know) but am a little puzzled about why it is taking so long to respond to, what should be, a very simple request.  Or am I missing something here.....