Highway safety inspection manual

The Council as Highway Authority is placed under a duty to maintain its highways by Section 41 of the Highways Act 1980. Section 58 of the Act allows the Council to mount a defence in actions taken against the authority if it can demonstrate that it has taken reasonable care to ensure that the highway was not dangerous to traffic having regards to:

• The character of the highway and the traffic which was reasonably expected to use it;
• The standard of maintenance appropriate for a highway of that character and used by such traffic;

• The state of repair in which a reasonable person would have expected to find the highway;
• Whether the authority knew, or could reasonably have been expected to know, that the condition of the part of the highway to which the action relates was likely to cause danger to users of the highway; and
• Where the highway authority could not reasonably have been expected to repair that part of the highway before the cause of action arose, what warning notices of its condition had been displayed.

Essentially this means that the authority must have in force a regular system of highway inspections, act upon any reports of defects, keep comprehensive and accurate records of all inspections and defect repairs and strive to fulfil its declared policy in relation to highway maintenance. Providing these obligations are adhered to, it can be expected to robustly defend public liability accident claims as well as offer the public an effective highway maintenance service.

Safety inspections are designed to identify all defects likely to create danger or serious inconvenience to users of the network or the wider community. Such defects should include those that will require urgent attention (within 24 hours) as well as those where the locations and sizes are such that longer periods of response would be acceptable. The risk of danger is assessed on site by highways officers and the defect identified as either category 1 or 2 along with its appropriate response time (see Section 3).

The highway infrastructure safety inspection regime forms a key aspect of the authority’s approach to managing liabilities and risks. The parameters considered for the safety inspection regime are:

• frequency of inspection;
• items for inspection;
• location of defect on the highway;
• type of traffic and intensity;
• method of inspection; and
• nature of response.