House of Commons Hansard Debates for 3 Nov 1997 (pt 23)

8.1 pm

Caroline Flint (Don Valley): I begin by thanking you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to raise the problems relating to unadopted roads, and by thanking my hon. Friend the Minister for being here to address the subject.

In raising this issue, I should like to draw attention to similar problems in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes). As a Whip he does not have the opportunity to raise the matter in such a debate, but his constituency, too, is plagued by the existence of unadopted roads and the long-standing conflicts and upset that they create. I also thank my hon. Friend for Neath (Mr. Hain), who is now an Under-Secretary of State for Wales, and other colleagues who have raised this matter in the House. It is of some reassurance to me that this matter has vexed some of my colleagues over many years, just as it has troubled their constituents.

All too often, when roads are discussed in national forums or the media, the debate is dominated by the case for or against a new motorway or the bypassing of a town or village. Such debates invariably attract petitioners, professors and protesters who argue the merits of Government policy and trade statistics and traffic flows. The Minister will have become familiar with such well-organised lobbies in her first few months in post.

During my few months as the Member of Parliament for Don Valley, my mailbag and surgeries have made me aware of the fact that, for a large number of my constituents, roads are a major issue. They live in isolation, in quiet cul-de-sacs, traditional terraces and leafy lanes. This group is not organised under a national banner and has no PR officers or full-time lobbyists. This large group of protesters comprises the residents of unadopted roads--private roads that have never been taken into the responsibility of a local authority. They have their own story to tell, some going back generations.

They include a lady in Clifton terrace, Conisbrough, who told me that, as a result of increased traffic from a recently built crescent that surrounds her little road, there is now a drop of 1 ft from the edge of her property into the road. A funeral hearse could not enter the road, and the body had to be moved to another house to shorten the journey to the hearse.

There is the plight of residents in Ingleborough drive, Sprotbrough, who are threatening to close their road to parents who park their cars to drop off and collect their children from the school opposite. The residents of Ingleborough drive are furious that, although many other people use their road, worsening its condition, it is not publicly maintained. Ironically, while part of their road is adopted, most of it is not.

Then there is the example of the elderly lady in the adjoining Ingle grove who refuses to leave her home because she feels that the road is too dangerous and she might fall. Or there are the residents of Minney Moor lane in Conisbrough, a steep sloping track running off the main Doncaster road. The road is subject to flash flooding and, in winter, water pours off the main road, washing away

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the top surface of the lane. The local archive reveals that the road was recognised as a private road as early as 1858. A letter from the borough engineer in 1959 appealed to residents to agree to improvements

"since without the approval of all the frontagers concerned the work cannot proceed."

The present residents of Minney Moor lane must feel that they are stuck in a time warp when they read such letters. The sad truth is that the present law for dealing with these problems is inoperable. We often hear of the concerns of the ambulance and fire services about traffic-calming measures hindering their progress. There is nothing like a rutted, potholed, unadopted road to enforce traffic calming--although when I am told that an ambulance driver collecting a patient who has experienced an angina attack is concerned that the bumpy journey may be doing more harm than good, "calming" is the last word that comes to mind. In several cases, I am informed, doctors will not drive along such roads.

The problem is not isolated or parochial. In Doncaster borough alone there are about 120 unadopted roads, plus a large number of unadopted service roads to the rear of terraced properties. There are an estimated 40,000 unadopted roads in Britain. That means that there are a lot of people left wanting a road policy that works for them. Private roads are largely historical accidents. In this day and age, no new private roads should be created. Modern planning law ensures that a developer makes up the roads to a suitable standard for adoption. Thereafter the roads are maintained by the local authority in the normal way.

However, the cost of making up existing unadopted roads for adoption is the responsibility of the affected residents, and that cost is usually prohibitive. In Doncaster, no road has been made up for adoption since 1986. Under present law, the local authority has the power to carry out emergency work to obviate danger to traffic, but with the capital constraints, even my own authority has ceased to undertake emergency work on unadopted roads, so roads become ever more neglected and, in some cases, extremely dangerous.

Mr. Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford, South): Is it not the case that residents of unadopted roads see other roads throughout their local authority area in Doncaster and Bradford, and cannot understand why moneys cannot be spent on their streets? They do not understand the difficulties that local authorities have in how they spend their money.

Caroline Flint: My hon. Friend is quite right. People would like their sense of inequality and injustice put right. I hope that the Minister will address that today.

Where does all this leave the residents of private roads? The money to pay for the initial work must be funded from the authority's capital funds if it is to deal with this issue, but competing priorities--especially for those for which the authority has a statutory responsibility--will always take precedent.

Doncaster is not alone, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe) rightly points out. This problem is commonplace among local authorities of all political persuasions throughout the country.

Judy Mallaber (Amber Valley): I agree that there is a need for this issue to be taken seriously. Although my

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own constituency does not have as many as 120 unadopted roads, I, like many other hon. Members, have a number of constituents who are concerned about the issue. It is often difficult to know who is responsible for which road. In cases where we are not sure whether the borough council or the county council is responsible for a road or whether it is private, it turns out to be unadopted.

My hon. Friend is right to say that sometimes there is a choice. Should a road be incapable of use by an ambulance just because it might otherwise be used by motor cycles speeding up and down it? The idea that a road that is full of potholes can be used for traffic calming rather than being in a fit state to be used by emergency vehicles and for people's ordinary transport is difficult to cope with. I hope that the Minister will take my hon. Friend's arguments very seriously. These matters are of great concern to those who feel that they cannot afford to finance the work needed to enable vehicles to use their road.

Caroline Flint: I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution.

Where does all this leave the residents of private roads? They can club together to have the road made up, but at about £200 per metre of road they often face a bill of £2,000 or more per household. For that reason, some residents object, and the plan invariably fails to proceed.

I am advised that houses on such roads cost less, which sometimes leads to a lower council tax. At one extreme the price differential leaves houses in the same council tax band as their adopted neighbours, while at the other extreme a modest saving on the purchase price 10 or 20 years ago is more than offset by a complete blight on the sale today, as prospective buyers make their first bumpy journey to view the house, never to return. The problem may be historical, but the misery seems eternal. Private roads are a private nightmare.

In this short debate, I ask the Minister to investigate the possible medium and long-term solutions to the problem. In time, the adoption of private roads may become one of our national transport objectives. We should seek imaginative ways of overcoming the financial obstacles to the making up of roads for adoption, such as using private finance to avoid the local authority having to make an initial capital outlay. Householders and other bodies with frontages on such streets are liable for making up private roads. The cost could perhaps be spread over 10 years as a charge on their council tax, thereby spreading the financial impact for present and future householders.

Private, unadopted roads should be regarded in the same way as outside toilets and asbestos in buildings: a legacy of the past and not something that we should live with in the future.

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