New road works tsar for Scotland

A new roads tsar has been appointed in Scotland to improve road works north of the border.

Elspeth King (pictured) has been appointed as the second Scottish Road Works Commissioner following the retirement of John Gooday, the current Commissioner.

The post of Commissioner was established to improve the planning, co-ordination and quality of road works throughout Scotland.

The Commissioner monitors performance, along with promoting and encouraging good practice across both utility companies and roads authorities. The Commissioner also has the power to apply penalties where legislative duties are not carried out.

King is a Chartered Civil Engineer with 30 years’ experience in the design, operation, management and maintenance of road networks.

She has been employed in both the public and private sectors and has 8 years’ experience at a senior level of the independent auditing of contract compliance in the road and rail industries.

She managed the Performance Audit Group, auditing trunk road maintenance in Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government, and led the first Rail Reporter team auditing Network Rail’s Annual Return on behalf of the Office of Rail Regulation.

She has worked on many road maintenance commissions for the Highways Agency and the Department for Transport and was Deputy Manager of the A13 DBFO private road for Transport for London.

She devised the innovative CLARENCE service for the public reporting of road defects while at Lothian Regional Council.