Plea to let E&I charge for roadworks

Deputy Lindsay de Sausmarez said there had been a significant increase recently in the demand for roadworks.

The president of Guernsey's Environment and Infrastructure Committee (E&I) issued a plea to allow her committee to charge for road closures.

Deputy Lindsay de Sausmarez said: "One of our bugbears is a lack of a mechanism to charge for road closures except for in a very limited way."

The move would partly be for revenue-raising, and also to deter those involved in work causing closures from taking too long.

In an update to the States, Mrs de Sausmarez told deputies 2,889 permits for work were granted in 2023, which was a 20%-25% increase on the preceding two years.

One in 10 of these permits were for what was described as "unplanned emergency works".

During an update on the work of E&I during the last six months, Mrs de Sausmarez said "recent infrastructure improvements do have some negative effects".

Part of those infrastructure improvements have included the installation of fibre broadband across the island.

Mrs de Sausmarez said: "During 2023, the new fibre-optic broadband infrastructure passed 8,286 properties and a vast 137.4km [85 miles] of cables have been installed across the island.

"By the end of this year, a further 8,400 properties are anticipated to benefit from fibre connectivity."

Charging mechanism

Under questioning from former environment member Deputy John Gollop, Mrs de Sausmarez expressed her frustration at the lack of a simple way for her committee to charge people to close roads while work is done.

"We are physically and legally not able to do that because we have not got the IT functionality in place."

She urged members to join E&I in "begging" the Policy and Resources Committee to give her committee the ability to charge for closures.

"It is a piece of IT infrastructure which would help a range of committees and we think it will have practical improvements for lots of different people."