Lane rental guidance updated

The Department for Transport has updated its lane rental scheme guidance for English local authorities, providing new insights into cost benefit analysis and legal issues.

DfT officials said the updates provide:

• clarification of the parity principle.
• alterations to cost-benefit analysis calculation questions to ensure better results.
• additions that authorities must seek their own legal advice should they wish to impose lane rental charges and that more time in the application process may be required should revisions to the scheme be required.
• clarification that authorities will have to set out the limits of variations to their scheme within the application and scheme documents.

The guidance sets out what local highway authorities need to do if they wish to develop proposals and apply to operate a lane rental scheme, subject to approval by the secretary of state for transport.

A lane rental scheme allows a local highway authority to charge works promoters for the time that street and road works occupy the highway.

Rental charges apply to works on the busiest streets at the busiest times, carried out by both utility companies and local highway authorities.