The administrator of TOPAS (Traffic Open Products & Specifications) is warning local authorities they could be breaking the law if they don’t use approved equipment on their roads.
Kealie Franklin has told the latest Highways Voices podcast that contractors and suppliers should ensure products are compliant to standards and specifications, because using non-compliant equipment can have legal and safety implications.
“Having spoken to local authorities, [we] understand that, generally speaking, local authorities pass that designated [compliance] authority over to somebody else to do that checking,” Ms Franklin said, “to find out or make sure that they’ve got compliant products on the roads, it’s not always the case.
“Anybody who’s providing non-compliant kit actually breaks the law in terms of the signing, lighting and guarding, because that’s very clear. The Red Book says products must be compliant, and whether the local authority take that responsibility or they pass it to another at the end of the day, the local authorities in all of their tenders should be stating compliant products only. If those people then don’t provide compliant products, then the liability shifts in some way, but however, there’s still a level of culpability if you’re using contractors that you know are using non compliant products.”
Ms Franklin was speaking on Highways Voices from the JCT Traffic Signals Symposium, but she said equipment quality goes beyond signals, with a warning against buying, for example, cheap imported solar road studs that have not been properly tested and approved: “If you’ve got safety officers that are looking to put things in place in the roads, they must talk to their signals engineers and their road engineers. It’s about linking up together,” she explains. “You get people who skip through pages of regulations because they don’t think it applies to them, and down in the deep and dirty there’s a lot of stuff that does apply, and it’s about proper use and effective use, and local authorities actually knowing what they can and can’t do and what they must insist on from their contractors and their suppliers.”
You can hear all the comments on the latest Highways Voices here.
(File picture – Highways News)
