What action will the Cabinet Secretary take to ensure that new built estates have infrastructure to an adoptable standard, so that there are no, or minimal maintenance charges for residents?
Answered by Cabinet Secretary for North Wales and Transport
| Answered on 22/04/2024
I set up the unadopted roads taskforce to look into this issue and have taken forward their recommendations, and introduced the following to ensure new built estates are built to an adoptable standard:
- A Good Practice Guide (Road Adoption Model Guide) – this process-maps what Welsh Local Highway Authorities need to do to control new road developments and ensure early robust agreements with developers.
- A set of Common Standards – this is set of basic design standards and specifications for new roads that Welsh Local Highway Authorities and the Housebuilding Federations have signed up to, that bring consistency throughout Wales that eases the reaching of formal agreements for new residential roads.
- Produced a Road Adoption Guide – the Welsh guide sets out processes and procedures for the development of new residential roads and having them formally adopted. This is a general guide which benefits a wider audience including a section for house buyers.
- Introduced Unadopted Road Pilot Improvement Programmes – a series of programmes have been run to pilot improvements in local authority areas to bring roads up to a standard that will ultimately be adopted by the host Local Highway Authority. £1000 of grant funding has been provided for this purpose this financial year.