i. the relevant part of Section 2 of the Highway Safety Inspection Manual that currently reads: ‘The maximum speed of the inspection vehicle throughout an inspection will be 20mph’ is amended with the highlighted text shown below to read:
‘The maximum speed of the inspection vehicle throughout an inspection will be 20mph unless a dynamic risk assessment on rural roads concludes it is safer to undertake these inspections at a speed more in keeping with traffic flows. However, this would still be limited to no more than 20mph on category 4b roads and 30mph on higher category rural roads’;

ii. to retain the amendments made to the HSIM following the Executive Members meeting of 7 May 2020 shown in italics in para 2.4 of this report, with the addition of the text shown as highlighted below:
“As an exception to the above, driven inspections can be carried out from a slow moving vehicle without a dedicated driver being present in low risk situations on category 4b roads, and in the event of a Government declaration of threat to public health for the duration of the declaration made under statutory provisions. This would be in situations where any actionable defects can still be identified and there are no additional public safety risks from not having a dedicated driver. In such circumstances the normal safety inspection vehicle may be replaced with an appropriately liveried Highways Officer’s van. In urban areas, the inspection will be carried out at no more than 10 mph on category 4b roads and 20 mph on higher category roads and in both directions and the Highways Officer must walk any sections where parked vehicles restrict the view of the full highway extent. A record must be kept of the inspection method used including those occasions where the inspection was conducted between 20mph and 30mph in rural locations;

iii. that such amendments are only to be effective for the duration of the public health response period as conferred by the Coronavirus Act 2020 and the Health Protection (Coronavirus Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020 and made by Government declaration;

iv. a further review is undertaken at the end of March 2021 unless deemed necessary to be undertaken sooner.

*PLEASE NOTE This decision was originally published on or near the date of the decision and so call in no longer applies. It has been re-published as part of the change in committee management system that we use.*

The intention is to minimise the risk to the Council’s employees by adhering to the Government requirement for social distancing and so that highway inspections are carried out within Public Health England Guidelines during the emergency period.