Roads maintenance contract
Case reference FOI2025/00244
Received 30 January 2025
Published 24 February 2025
Request
Nearly 12 months ago I made a FOI request that asked for the following,
1. What is the specification the counties roads maintenance contractor has to comply with?
2. What are the terms of their contract excluding any financial information?
3. Does the County have any directly employed road maintenance labour?
4. Please provide an electronic copy of the relevant documents.
Please redact any commercially sensitive information.
Your staff did not understand the request and queried it, so I explained.
What they sent me is on 2024-04-26 is not what was requested.
Please send me the requested documents together with any relevant drawings and details your contractors have to work to.
In very simple terms, what I am asking for is that your road repair and maintenance teams/Contractors are working to a set of specifications and drawings showing what they are required to comply with and what they are doing has a set of descriptions with rates attached.
The writer is asking what do they have to comply with?
What standard do you set for road repairs?
The specification used to be New Roads and Street Works Act. My copy is dated 1991, which is well out of date, but your gangs must be complying with some form of related specification and standard.
The copies of documents should not show any unit rates, or values, strictly speaking these should be redacted because is commercially sensitive information.
It won’t make any difference to me if its not redacted because I have no interest in carrying out any roadworks.
The important thing for me is what they must do and the standard they should achieve, that should be very easy and quick to provide, your engineers and managers must use the documents requested every day.
Response
Nearly 12 months ago I made a FOI request that asked for the following,
1. What is the specification the counties roads maintenance contractor has to comply with?
2. What are the terms of their contract excluding any financial information?
3. Does the County have any directly employed road maintenance labour?
4. Please provide an electronic copy of the relevant documents.
Please redact any commercially sensitive information.
Your staff did not understand the request and queried it, so I explained.
What they sent me is on 2024-04-26 is not what was requested.
Please send me the requested documents together with any relevant drawings and details your contractors have to work to.
In very simple terms, what I am asking for is that your road repair and maintenance teams/Contractors are working to a set of specifications and drawings showing what they are required to comply with and what they are doing has a set of descriptions with rates attached.
The writer is asking what do they have to comply with?
What standard do you set for road repairs?
The specification used to be New Roads and Street Works Act. My copy is dated 1991, which is well out of date, but your gangs must be complying with some form of related specification and standard.
The copies of documents should not show any unit rates, or values, strictly speaking these should be redacted because is commercially sensitive information.
It won’t make any difference to me if its not redacted because I have no interest in carrying out any roadworks.
The important thing for me is what they must do and the standard they should achieve, that should be very easy and quick to provide, your engineers and managers must use the documents requested every day.
Answer: In the previous response (reference FOI2024/00483), we provided links to the Council website for the Highways Maintenance Plan, contract information and annual plans, and provided the following 5 supporting documents:
• Annex 0.1 - Herefordshire Model - MAC Model Contract Service Information HW Baseline Spec part1 V1.0
• Annex 0.2 - Herefordshire Model - MAC Model Contract Service Information HW Baseline Spec part2 V1.0
• Annex 0.3 - Herefordshire Model - MAC Model Contract Service Information HW Baseline Spec part3 V1.0
• Annex 0.4 - Herefordshire Model - MAC Model Contract Service Information HW Baseline Spec part4 V1.0
• Pothole Repair Standard Detail v2.00
The Service Area have advised these response documents included details and drawings, as previously requested. Please be advised the contract is not a schedule of rates contract and therefore rates aren’t included.
The Service Area have also advised the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 is not our specification for works. The Act is designed to regulate and manage activities on the public highway and is mainly around a range of matters, including excavation, installation and maintenance of utility apparatus.
Our specification for works is the Highways Maintenance Plan, which was provided previously.
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.