§ Mr. Fitchasked the Secretary of State for Transport what progress he has made for reviewing the role and organisation of the road construction units following the White Paper "Policy for Roads: England 1978", Command Paper No. 7132; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. William RodgersIn the White Paper we said that, with the reduced scale of the road programme, and changes in policies and priorities for it, we would need to take a fresh look at the organisational arrangements for designing and building roads and, in particular, at the role and organisation of the road construction units—RCUs. My Department is today sending a discussion paper on the future construction of roads to the local authority associations, the departmental staff side and local authority unions, and will be opening consultations with them in the near future. I have arranged for copies of the discussion paper to be placed in the Library of the House.
Although a substantial trunk road programme remains, it seems likely that over the next decade there will be a shift of 641W emphasis from trunk to local road buildings. The objectives of the review must be to ensure that Departmental and local authority resources of skilled manpower are deployed effectively to reflect this shift of emphasis, to provide as much stability as possible for the staff concerned and to ensure the least practicable disruption of the progress of the programme. The discussion paper points to the desirability of making arrangements that offer maximum flexibility in deploying engineering effort between trunk and local road schemes. It raises the question whether a carefully planned reversion to road building by local authorities on an Agency basis—though with a continuing close departmental involvement, because of the scale and nature of the schemes—for all schemes currently in hand in RCU sub-units and planned to start after some date in the early 1980's would be the best wav forward.
(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) July 1975 … 1½ miles south of A25 interchange 1 car 2 slight none November 1976 … Northern slip road of A25 interchange 2 cars 2 slight none November 1976 … 2 miles south of A25 interchange 5 cars 2 serious none 1 slight November 1976 … 100 yards north of Morleys roundabout interchange 1 car 1 serious none November 1977 … 1 mile south of A25 interchange 2 cars 3 serious 3 April 1978 … 1 mile south of A25 interchange 2 cars 1 serious 3 1 van