Bob Milton

Day 3.

On the third day of Christmas:

There are two types of Traffic Regulation Order.

The first is temporary and usually only lasts three to six months when a highway is required to be dug up by utilities or for resurfacing and other temporary works. It is also usual for diversions to be put in place. This type of Traffic order is also used for the temporary closure of rights of way which are out of use or considered dangerous. The Secretary of State must give consent and are not normally for more than six months though the Minister can extend it once on application by the highway authority. The reason is that it is a statutory duty for the highway authority to maintain the highway but it is not always possible to get the works completed due to weather etc.

What usually happens is that the Highway Authority in the form of the rights of way department does not have any money or decides that they have more important priorities for the meagre budget. There are many examples of Highway authorities making spurious excuses to the Minister and getting three consecutive orders unlawfully when the real reason is they do not want to do the work or meet the statutory duty. The financial argument fails as a result of a court case often just quoted as the Tandy case where finance can not be used as an excuse for not meeting statutory duty. Yet the Ministers representative [GOSE until they disappear in March] consistently extends Temporary TROs where the underlying reason is the lack of will to meet statutory duty.

The second and more contentious is the effective use of Permanent TROs to extinguish or down grade rights of way. The most prolific is the use on Byways Open to All Traffic [BOATs]. Here we see not only the lack of will to maintain the right of way suitable for its purpose which includes all traffic both vehicular and non motorised but also the effective privatisation of the highway for private use as most of these have private vehicular rights which are not affected by the Order so that these vehicles usually the local adjacent land and house owners get what is essentially a private drive.

Yes there can be conflict on narrow un-metalled highways which can degrade very quickly with modern motors but what happens is that the police refuse to enforce unless there are barriers so the local transport committee includes carriage driving in the ban. This is discriminatory and is in breach of the Equality Act 2010.

A new twist to the problem of using permanent Traffic Regulation orders has been recently seen in its use to stop an at grade non motorised crossing of the A3 by the Highways Agency. The crossing not only links two bridlepaths but effectively bisects a common for ever for all as of right users. The reasoning has been so twisted as to not even take into account the duty to have a reasonable alternative. From one direction the extra mileage is over 4.5 miles for cyclists and equestrians and 1.8miles for pedestrians is this reasonable?

On top of this there has never been an accident to non motorised users crossing at this point. Again the reason is that it would be too costly yet further north and south where the same situation existed both an equestrian bridleway bridge and bridleway underpasses have been built as part of individual major project schemes. It is unreasonable, unjustified and discriminatory to use permanent TROs to effectively down grade or extinguish rights of way