Infrastructure adoption at the Hardwicke Place housing development

Last week I raised a query with the council on behalf of a resident asking if or when the highways infrastructure associated with the ongoing housing development at Hardwicke Place in Blackhall Colliery will be adopted by the local highways authority.

Please see the response below from the Senior Highways Adoption Engineer regarding this request. I'll keep residents up to date with any further developments when I have more information from the council.

“The roundabout is currently on its 12-month maintenance period and is due to be adopted in May this year.

The roundabout was designed to national standards and was subject to a Stage 2 Road Safety Audit (RSA) at the design stage and a Stage 3 RSA post-completion; the latter being attend by officers from Durham Constabulary.

There were, admittedly, several problems identified by the second audit, but these were all addressed.

In respect of the residential streets, we have had no requests from the developer to inspect these for maintenance.

While I am unaware of any ongoing issue that may be preventing this, whole development is covered by Agreements pursuant to Section 38 of the Highways Act, 1980, which would enable the council to complete the development in any default event, however, no such conditions have been reached at this time and we, therefore, must allow the developer to complete the development to suit their own resources.”