4. What assessment has the Counsel General made of the legislation underpinning road adoption within new housing developments in Wales? OQ55915

Welsh Ministers established a taskforce evaluating potential solutions regarding unadopted roads. It concluded that legislative changes were not required, but a good-practice guide was published, reducing the risk of further unadopted roads being created. We will shortly publish findings from our call for evidence on estate charges on new developments.

Following the Member debate, which I proposed in Plenary on 14 February 2018, I was pleased to see the report from the unadopted roads taskforce. However, one element disappoints me, and that relates to the lack of legal weight behind some of the recommendations. In particular, the taskforce's road adoption model guide states that if five or more properties are served by a road in a new housing development, highways authorities should serve an advanced payment code notice on developers, which essentially ensures a financial bond is in place to meet any future costs of bringing the road up to adoptable standard, as you will be aware. However, guidance and recommendation, I would suggest, is not strong enough, in my opinion, in this case. Will you, therefore, commit to holding further discussions with the Minister for transport to explore whether legislation should be introduced in this area so as to place a duty on local authorities to serve a notice on developers in such circumstances? 

I thank Dai Lloyd for his further question in relation to that. I think the Minister for the economy, who commissioned the work of the taskforce, last made a statement on this topic only a few weeks ago at the end of October. The recommendations from the taskforce, which is, obviously, constituted in order to give advice, took the view that the better route at this stage certainly relates to the use of the Highways Act 1980, and the powers under section 38 in particular, and that the rest of its recommendations could be achieved, indeed, without primary legislation. As I say, there is a further call for evidence in relation to matters related to estate charges. The point he makes about the payment obligations are, obviously, particularly concerning. Whether or not there'll be any legislative considerations that arise in the context of estate charges will have to remain to be seen when we have the recommendations and the output of the call for evidence.