Highway authority charges beyond sections 278 and 38

The agreements under sections 278 and 38 of the Highways Act 1980 are the highway costs everybody budgets for. The charges that damage appraisals are the ones sitting around them: design checking fees, inspection fees, bonds, commuted sums, order costs, licences and permits, most of them payable to the same authority at different moments and none of them included in the contractor's price for the works.

None is large on its own. Together, on a scheme of any size, they add up to a number worth knowing before the land is bought.

Charges that sit outside the agreements

The agreements cover the works. The authority's own costs of administering them are recovered separately, usually as percentages of the estimated works value and set out in a published fee schedule that changes each year.

The recurring items:

• A technical approval or design checking fee, charged on the estimated cost of the works
• A supervision or inspection fee covering site attendance during construction
• Legal fees for drafting and completing each agreement, payable whether or not it completes
• A bond or other surety for the value of the works plus a contingency, with a premium payable to the provider
• Commuted sums for future maintenance of anything non-standard
• Land transfer costs where highway land changes hands

Ask for the current fee schedule at the start. Most highway authorities publish one, and the percentages differ enough between authorities to matter on a large scheme. The wider picture of what the agreements themselves cost in a development budget sets the baseline these charges sit on top of.

Technical approval and checking fees

Technical approval is the process by which the highway authority satisfies itself that the design meets its standards. On anything involving a structure, a retaining wall, drainage connections or lighting, that check is thorough and iterative.

Two costs follow. The authority's fee, and your engineer's time responding to comments. The second frequently exceeds the first, and it is the one nobody allows for, because the fee schedule gives a number and the response effort does not.

Reduce both by designing to the authority's own standard details from the outset. Departures from standard need formal approval, take longer, and often attract a commuted sum for maintenance. Every non-standard kerb, surface material, tree pit and drainage feature should be a conscious decision with a cost attached.

Street naming and numbering

The council's street naming and numbering function charges for assigning addresses, usually as a fee per street plus a fee per property. It is administratively small and programme-critical, because utilities, postal services and building control all depend on addresses existing.

Apply early. Developers regularly discover at handover that plot numbers are not addresses, and that the service that supplies them has a lead time.

Traffic regulation orders

Any change to on-street restrictions needs a traffic regulation order: new waiting restrictions, a revised speed limit, a loading bay, a bus stop clearway, changes to a one-way system.

Orders are a statutory process with advertising, a consultation period, consideration of objections, and in contested cases a decision by committee. The developer pays the authority's costs of making the order, including advertising and the physical signs and lines, and the process runs to months rather than weeks.

Two risks worth pricing. An order can be objected to and refused, which means the mitigation it was meant to deliver does not arrive. And an order that is a condition precedent to occupation puts the programme in the hands of a process the developer does not control. Where that is the case, raise it at the drafting stage of the planning condition or obligation, because the same problem recurs in section 106 costs beyond the headline contribution.

Licences, permits and temporary traffic management

Construction in and around the highway brings its own consents, each with a fee.

Permit schemes carry booking lead times, and some authorities operate lane rental charging on the busiest roads, where the charge accrues daily while the road space is occupied. On a constrained urban site those daily charges can outweigh every other item on this list, and they reward a construction sequence designed around them. The traffic management commitments belong in the Construction Traffic Management Plan so that the contractor prices them properly.

Commuted sums that arrive late

Commuted sums cover future maintenance of assets the authority will adopt but would not have chosen: block paving, street trees, sustainable drainage features, structures, non-standard lighting, and traffic calming.

They are calculated from the asset's design life and maintenance cycle, and the calculation is usually the authority's own. Three things make them arrive as a surprise: they are agreed late in the technical approval process, they are payable before adoption rather than at agreement, and they are sensitive to design choices made months earlier by somebody with no visibility of the sum.

Ask for indicative commuted sum rates at the concept design stage. An authority that charges a substantial sum per street tree will tell you if asked, and the design can then decide knowingly between the tree and the money.

Stopping up and diversion orders

Where a development sits over an existing highway, however small, the highway has to be stopped up or diverted before building over it. Orders to enable development are made under planning powers, with an alternative route under the Highways Act in other cases.

Both routes involve publicity, an objection period and, where objections are sustained, a public inquiry. Both carry the authority's costs. And both take long enough that they have to start before the contractor is appointed, not when the foundations reach the line.

Check for unrecorded public rights as well as adopted highway. A footpath on the definitive map running across the middle of a site is a programme problem that gets more expensive the later it is found.

Assembling the full highway budget

Build the list once, early, and keep it as a live schedule.

1. Fee schedule percentages for checking and supervision, applied to a realistic works estimate.
2. Legal fees for each agreement, including the authority's costs.
3. Bond value and the annual premium, with the expected release date.
4. Commuted sums, itemised by asset type.
5. Order costs for every traffic regulation order the scheme depends on.
6. Licence and permit fees, including any lane rental exposure.
7. Street naming and numbering.
8. An allowance for design response time to technical approval comments.

Then attach a date to each. Highway costs rarely break a budget by their size. They break it by arriving in a sequence nobody mapped, at moments when the scheme has no flexibility left.

This is general guidance rather than legal advice, and highway charges are set by individual authorities and revised periodically, so check the current published schedule before relying on any figure.

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