| |  | Replacement transportation manager found for Steve Lee | | | Surrey appoints replacement transport managerJuly 12, 2007: Surrey County Council is pleased to announce the arrival of Iain Reeve on Monday 2 July to lead its new Transport for Surrey service.
Iain, an experienced transport manager with more than 20 years experience in national, regional and local government, joins from Hampshire County Council, where he was Head of Transport Policy and Transport Special Projects Manager.
He has previously held roles at the Government Office for the south east and the Department of Transport. He is a member of the Regional Assembly’s Transport Advisory Group and a board member of the Local Transport Planning Network.
Iain said: “I am delighted to be joining an organisation which is aiming to be a world-class transport authority. I look forward to working with colleagues and councillors to make this happen and to providing an excellent, value for money service for Surrey’s residents.”
David Munro, Executive Member for Transportation, said: “We are fortunate to have attracted someone of Iain’s calibre and experience. In his career spanning national, regional and local government he has demonstrated an excellent track record in transport policy and delivery. I look forward very much to working with him to improve transport in Surrey.”
The post is newly created following the county council’s decision to divide its transportation service into two. In recognition of the prime importance of the condition of Surrey’s roads, the Surrey Highways service will be dedicated to looking after them. The Transport for Surrey service will deal with all other transportation issues, including passenger transport, road safety, traffic planning and congestion.
 ‘Transportation’ department to be split in two
February 26, 2007: Surrey’s potholes have claimed another victim. This time it’s Surrey County Council (SCC) ‘transportation’ boss Steve Lee, who has fallen on his sword after moving to head of ‘transportation’ from deputy head less than two years ago.
The likeliest explanation for the fate of the Surrey wheels tsar is a fresh outburst of complaints about the state of the county’s roads. In recent weeks the Dorking/Leatherhead Advertiser has carried several motorists’ complaints about the cracks, bumps and holes they have to drive over.
These follow a spate of bad publicity last spring about the performance of SCC’s East Surrey highway-maintenance contractor Carillion, of Wolverhampton, West Midlands.
SCC is to hive highway maintenance off into a separate department to be called Surrey Highways. What’s left will be a customer-facing organisation dealing with buses, rail, planning and road safety called Transport for Surrey.
An SCC spokeswoman said it was too early to define either the exact roles of the new departments, which were still being ‘fine tuned’ but the Bugle understands that the reorganisation stems directly from the Carillion scandal.
‘The nature of the services are different,’ said a senior SCC source. ‘One is working through a contract [with suppliers like Carillion] and being an interface between them and the council, and other is dealing with the transport area and the subsidies for that, and including the provision of transport services to other departments.’
SCC advertised the posts for the Head of Surrey Highways and Head of Transport for Surrey on February 1 and 4. The jobs closed for applications on Monday February 19. No appointments have yet been made but it’s likely Lee left when it became clear he would not be in the running for either job.
In today’s statement to the Bugle SCC said: ‘The council is currently reorganising its transportation service and this cuts the current service in two. This change in effect deletes the post of Head of Transportation.
‘Steve Lee has decided that this is an appropriate time to take the opportunity presented by this reorganisation to explore new opportunities that build upon his considerable experience and skills. Steve has been a valued employee of the Council for 32 years. The Council acknowledges the contribution that Steve has made over his long career in Surrey and wishes him well in any new venture he follows.’
Last month the website LocalGov.co.uk carried a news piece from The Surveyor magazine reporting that SCC was planning ‘a move away from a partnership approach to delivering highways repairs, with more formal, structured contract management and a re-emphasis on the client-contractor distinction.’
The report said the authority ‘is overhauling the partnering deal it hailed as the ‘next generation’ for highways maintenance four years ago, following problems with the productivity of road repair gangs.’
This followed a Surrey Advertiser story last spring revealing a Surrey inspector’s finding that a Carillion repairs gang had wasted most of a shift.
Carillion introduced a GPS tracking system to monitor staff. ‘Surrey also now makes regular productivity checks on Carillion and Ringway, its other contractor – which was also found to have under-productive workers,’ said LocalGov.
Despite these changes the SCC executive was advised in the autumn that the council needed ‘to ensure the right balance between partnership and a strict contractural relationship’.
Councillors had urged a reconsideration of the ethos of the partnering deal towards a more traditional local authority-contractor contract.
Both contractors have accepted the concept of the transfer back to the council of the functions of highways safety inspection and confirmation that works have been completed satisfactorily.
Any further changes to the contracts to ensure more formal contract management which the authority decides are needed would be implemented from the start of 2007/2008.
By grim coincidence, a day or so before Friday’s rail tragedy in Cumbria, Carillion was awarded a five-year, £60m contract to renew and maintain signalling for Network Rail (NRL). Only last August NRL banned Carillion from bidding for such contracts because of its deteriorating workforce safety record.
Carillion was NRL’s contractor on the Tebay section of the West Coast Main Line on which four workers were killed and many others injured by a runaway road rail trailer exactly three years ago. Last week’s accident also occurred on the Tebay section, for which Carillion is still responsible, though there is no suggestion that Carillion bears responsibility for last week’s accident. The Yorkshire Post tells of a similar incident in January 2003.
What do you think about the state of local roads? Tell the editor.
Article updated February 28, 2007
| | |
| | Surrey admits liability for pothole injury | | | Settlement on the horizon13 August 2007: Cyclist Roger Smith, injured after falling from his bike after hitting a pothole earlier this year (story below), is telling friends Surrey has acknowledged liability for the incident.
More details when we get them. For now it's worth noting a Surrey Advertiser report last month that Surrey had underspent its £40 million roads budget by £5m. One delayed bridge-strengthening project, says the report, accounted for half the underspend.
But the underspend includes only projects, not road repairs. The report says Cllr David Monro, who is SCC's executive member for transport, told a council meeting that road repairs were overspent by £750,000.
There are rumours, however, that Surrey has suddenly found £10m for road maintenance and repairs.
More to potholes than protection of Surrey's 4x4 investmentMarch 5, 2007: To look at recent Press coverage about the state of Surrey’s roads, you would think the biggest worry is the damage potholes do to the delicate suspension systems of the county’s extensive fleet of 4x4s.
But there’s a more serious side to the story. Experienced cyclist Roger Smith, 47, didn’t think himself lucky to suffer concussion, a broken nose, broken teeth, extensive cuts and bruises and shock when, early in January, he hit what he called a ‘very deep pothole’ at a drainage gully and was thrown from his bike.
The big question is why the pothole that caused Smith’s downfall, on the A24 near the junction of Epsom Road and Bramley Way, was, according to him, one among so many faults even along the same road.
The rules Surrey is supposed to follow to make its roads safe for cyclists and others couldn’t be clearer. They are set out in the ‘code of practice for road maintenance management’. The code is not mandatory but widely endorsed by highway authorities throughout the UK, including Surrey. Failure to adhere to it might be evidence of Surrey’s neglect of its legal duty of care to road users, including cyclists.
Any pothole more than 40mm deep, says Appendix A of Surrey’s version of the code, is a Category 1 (CAT1) defect and has to be fixed within 24 hours of the authority learning about it. In a marked cycle lane, this applies to any pothole more than 25mm deep, but Smith was travelling along an ordinary roadway, albeit a primary route.
LAs have to keep records of the number of reported defects and the percentage they managed to fix within the 24 hours. Smith told the Leatherhead Advertiser (January 11, 2007) that he used to report all the potholes he encountered but gave this up because of Surrey’s indifference.
Smith’s complaint against Surrey depends to some extent on whether someone else had reported the hole. But LAs are supposed to inspect primary routes in their areas at least every six months and secondary routes at least every 12 months. What seems to have hampered Surrey’s ability to keep on top of road maintenance is its decision in 2003 to hand the problem to two private contractors, Carillion and Ringway.
Surrey’s contracts with Carillion (which it made responsible for the east of the county) and Ringway (west) were potentially worth more than £300 million over ten years, according to an SCC statement from May 2003. ‘Initially they will be for a four-year period but could be extended to ten years, subject to performance. Carillion and Ringway are responsible for delivering all highway maintenance and improvement works to the county’s highway network, except individual road schemes costing more than £500,000.’
Carillion’s contract with SCC is for £56 million over three years. The deal is not the normal arms’-length outsourcing contract. It is a ‘partnership’ arrangement which allows Carillion to send Surrey a monthly bill for its services regardless of the work actually done. This is because, instead of giving Carillion responsibility for carrying out work specified by SCC engineers, the contract gives Carillion ‘design authority’.
Under the old regime, SCC designed, say, a pelican crossing then give the design to the contractor to carry out. Now SCC issues a works order telling the contractor not only to do the construction but to design the work as well.
So as part of the SCC’s Cycle Strategy Scheme, for example, a works order was issued to Carillion ‘for Borough-wide signing improvement and resurfacing of footpath between White Horse Drive and Craddocks Avenue.’ The works order doesn’t identify the individual pieces of work within that works order, so when Carillion presents its monthly bill for this and other work there is no way of checking what has been done or how much it costs.
In January, however, the specialist local government website
carried a strong signal that the relationship had run onto the rocks. According to the website, ‘Both contractors have accepted the concept of the transfer back to the council of the functions of highways safety inspection and confirmation that works have been completed satisfactorily.’
This followed revelations the previous summer both of widespread time-wasting by Carillion work teams and balooning costs for the work that was done. The estimate for one repair, to a piece of road in Dorking half a metre by three metres, was put at £200. The eventual cost to the council was not far off £3,000.
Carillion agreed to knock nearly £2 million off its bill over the next two years and introduced a GPS tracking system to monitor its workmen. Surrey also began to make regular ‘productivity checks’ on both Carillion and Ringway.
Surrey and Carillion can thank their lucky stars that Smith, assistant manager at the National Counties Building Society in the Ashley Centre, Epsom, wasn’t killed. As it is, he’s seeking legal advice.
Smith can look after himself. He has been cycling to work for 24 years and using this particular road for five. But then, if a cyclist with this background can come a cropper, what chance do younger, less experienced cyclists stand?
| | |
|
