Clause 62 - Builders' skips: charge for occupation
Traffic Management Bill
5:30 pm
Mr Tony McNulty (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Harrow East, Labour)
The Government amendments are tidying-up amendments. People always baulk when a Minister says that, but these really are what I claim them to be. Clause 63(5) states that certain provisions in clause 62, which apply to the establishment of charging for overrunning schemes for skips in the highway would also apply to the lane rental charging schemes for skips under clause 63. Those include the provision in clause 62(5) that regulations under that section can require the owner of a skip to give a highway authority an estimate of how long the skip is expected to remain on the street, and that the authority will be deemed to have accepted that estimate as a reasonable one unless it indicates otherwise. Authorities need that information to calculate whether skips have overrun their permitted duration. However, it is not needed for lane rental. The only information needed to calculate charges for that is when a skip was placed in a road and when it was removed.
The reference in clause 63(5) to subsection (5) is a mistake, which Government amendment No. 64 removes. Government amendment No. 66 has the same effect, except that it removes an equivalent reference in clause 65(6) to subsection (7), which relates to charges for placing scaffolding and other building materials on the highway. Those are simply minor, cross-referencing points.
Government amendments Nos. 63 and 65 remove a couple of inconsistencies in clauses 62 and 64, which respectively cover charges for skips and for scaffolding and building materials, when agreed durations are overrun. Amendment No. 63 places in clause 62 a similar provision to that in clause 64(9), which explains that regulations can set different overrun charges for different circumstances—for example, they can be higher or lower depending on how much of a road is affected by an obstruction. Amendment No. 65 places in clause 64 similar wording to that in clause 62(7), which makes it clear that the regulations can state what method should be used to calculate, for example, how long a skip has occupied a street.
Those are not substantial policy changes that have crept in through devious means because we changed out mind when the Bill was published. They simply cross-reference minor points in other clauses. I commend all of the Government amendments to the Committee.