Highways Devolution Local Council Pilot

Background

Essex County Council (ECC) has a legal duty under the Highways Act 1980 to maintain the Essex highways network. ECC currently (2019) meets this duty primarily by commissioning a professional highways services company to manage and deliver most highways maintenance activities. There are also several grant agreements in place with a number of District Councils in Essex, to deliver certain associated highways services.

Local Devolution

Each parish and town council in Essex plays a hugely important role within their local community and ECC is working to pilot a shift in power towards local communities. We would like to work collaboratively with the representatives of those local communities, promoting partnership between tiers of local government.

ECC has identified a number of highway maintenance services that could benefit from local delivery. Delivery by a local council would enable quicker response in a more targeted way, as a result of the local community’s own local knowledge and priorities. This could increase local satisfaction, generating increasing greater community pride and helping to focus limited resources where they will add more value. This pilot aims to test such an approach. 

Scope

Working with the Essex Association of Local Councils (EALC), in 2018 Essex County Council announced a pilot scheme to run in 2019/20, from 1 March 2019 until 29 February 2020.

This pilot will devolve a range of highways maintenance responsibilities to Parish or Town councils who are interested in trialling devolution and are prepared to sign an agreement scoping the arrangement.

ECC is also in discussions with District Councils too, for unparished areas.

The service areas being devolved in the pilot are primarily ‘streetscene’ type items – things which if left under-repaired or maintained can significantly disfigure the local environment. However they are also items which have a lower general priority for investment by the County Council and so are less likely to be dealt with in the near future.

Parish and Town Councils who sign up to the pilot are free to choose which combination of the in-scope activities they wish to deliver. There is no obligation to deliver all the activities listed; participating councils may choose which particular services they wish to deliver.

The 2019/20 pilot is grant-funded by ECC. Participating Parishes and Towns may wish to consider topping up funds from their own resources, and / or combine their funding grant with those of neighbouring parishes who may also be participating.

As further background information, ECC have previously published a CMA (‘Cabinet Member Action’) on the pilot.