The only thing I would question in that article is the very last couple of paragraphs from the association which represents the contractors employed by the Highways Agency, the HTMA.

The Highways Agency themselves are a government department and their staff do a very good and often dangerous job as I discovered when a car I was travelling in had an offside rear flat tyre that needed a wheel change on the hard shoulder last year, The Highways Agency were called and they covered our backs while we changed the wheel - quite a frightening thing to do with huge trucks passing inches by your heels at 50/60mph.

But as a government department their costs are covered, their employees shifts are paid for in full, they'd be paid if they had no call outs or a hundred call outs per week, thats what some of our taxes are paid for, you might argue that that is what the road fund licence os for (although we all know it disappears into a black hole of the treasury).

The contractors who are called out to repair barriers and road surfaces after an incident are a different matter, I presume that they are on a standby contract with a structured fee per callout, or at least that is the way it would and is done in the industry that I work in, and again, presumably they are paid by The Highways Agency - so why would they be seeking to recover costs from individuals, are they saying that they don't get reimbursed by the Highways Agency, or that they don't get reimbursed enough by The Highways Agency, are they just recovering the difference between their fixed call out fee and what the call out actually cost, or are they billing for the whole call out when in fact The Highway Agency has already paid them for the job ?

Presumably everyone gets paid at the end of the day - so why seek to recover the costs from motorists who have already paid for the facility through taxation, is this the thin edge of a wedge to charge for motorway use ?

It doesn't work like that on H.A contracts. These days, when they bid for the "franchise" the contractors have to say that they will charge £x million to attend and deal with all accidents over the length of the contract. This is of course anybodies guess as to how many accidents and the amount of damage that may be caused to the infrastructure in those incidents over the length of the contract (usually 5 -7yr's but 30 years in the instance of the M25 contract) So, if they under-estimate or use it as a "loss-leader" to win the contract they are going to try and claim back every penny they can off whoever they can on each occasion. Before these so called "super agency" agencies were let, it was H.A policy (they chased the money in those days) that if an invoice came to less than £250, they never chased it as admin costs pushed it past this amount

Then frankly that is a crazy system and you can see why a company would be so keen to try every avenue to increase revenue - if indeed its them that pockets the income.

The company I work for has weekend call-out cover for several of the large supermarket chains and for all of them the system that THEY adopt is a "voucher" system where they pay a small retainer for 52 weekends worth of engineer standby time and then any call outs are charged at one "voucher" each, the cost of the voucher being the bit that is negotiated every three years.

It suits all partners, the supermarkets don't pay for anything that they don't use (no supermarket likes doing that) and we only charge when we work and don't have to stick our neck on the line with guestimates as to when we'll be used.

We don't do that in IT support (both on-site h/w and remote s/w o/s etc) for the reason that with a "voucher" system companies would be reluctant to use it, and often hold off using it for what might start as a minor problem. Then it becomes a bigger problem and causes more service issues, more impact and is harder for us to fix.

With enough data and enough scale of operation you can get your numbers and forecasts usually right. The other plus point for the client is that the supplier is incented to work to reduce the number of incidents, which can reduce their costs.

I think the issue here is that work is being billed for that either hasn't been done, need not been done, or has been done and charged at a grossly over-inflated rate. The sort of thing that might (allegedly) go on at car garages, or firms of solicitors.

Whilst working for a large government department, every now and again, the lights would go off because a fuse had tripped. This was no problem, because we all knew where the fuse box was, and it took 2 seconds to sort.

We notified the maintenance contractor of this recurring problem. Their solution? Put a padlock on the fuse box and produce a £75.00 bill every time they were called out to flip the switch.

It's not a system I agree with, far from it. But it's the system H.A use and all contractors play by those rules, so whoever wins the contract is going to chase the money. For the record, the company I work for take photos at every scene as supporting evidence, from the mundane oil spillage, a safety fence strike or resurfacing after spillages etc. The flip-side to the story is that many drivers deny causing the damage, but photos soon sort this out

If you want something to get worried about, worry about rlthisrl.

They can take all the pictures they want, proving that the driver is liable to pay these charges is very debatable.

I think it's absolute toss to be honest. You pay car tax. Unless the driver has committed the damage deliberately or the grossest of gross recklessness, then that's what your taxes pay for.

When even The Telegraph is questioning NHS cuts you know the Tories have screwed up!

The venal, leaching bastads are no different to the legion of ambulance chasers. They see an opportunity to get money from a "free" fund, when in reality all that is happening is the majority of insured drivers will see their premiums increase to cover such eventualities.

I think there is an obvious issue of potential scam billing going on here - charging for cleaning up an oil leak when there was none for example or blatant over charging but what I don't understand is why they are allowed to charge at all.

Who has legislated that that these companies have a right to chase motorists for money?

This isn't an issue of should motorists pay for any damage caused in an accident or not. That is a different debate.

I'd be interested to see how many of these such cases actually go to court. It sounds very much like the sort of "civil recovery" schemes that a lot of retailers us to claim "losses" back from suspected shoplifters (where the items listed in such claims include CCTV, security guards and other things that would be in the store anyway).

In reality, there is nothing to stop anyone asking anyone to pay an "invoice" (it's how private parking companies do business) but if the driver ignores the invoices, it is up to the claimant to prove to a court that the amounts claimed are justified and a true reflection of losses (which is why most private parking firms don't take people to court - it's hard to justify that somebody overstaying for 10mins in a free car park has caused £100 of "losses"icon_wink.gif. Anyway, I digress....

Oi, leave ambulance chasers alone

Well, the article states that
"The Highways Agency says when repairs are needed after a breakdown or collision it is not right that the costs should be borne by the taxpayer and therefore they or their contractors will seek to recover the cost of repairs from insurance companies or individuals where appropriate."

Going back to my original example, if you smash into my garden wall, I can claim for the damage, and so if you smash into the Highways Agency's wall, ditto. If the HA has a contract with some company to repair walls, then I would agree on the face of it there is no way that company could make a claim. It isn't an insurance company, and so the HA's rights can't be subrogated to it, and it has not had any of its own property damaged, and can't claim for pure "economic loss".

This suggests that there must be some form of legislation that permits the charge, such as that which makes you liable for towing and storage charges if the police have your car recovered from an accident.


of course it is, maybe from a different angle, but exactly the same issue.


Yes do - tied to the barrier to await hopefully frequent collisions.