Operating the West and Shires Permit (WaSP) Scheme gives us greater influence over how and when activities are carried out. However, it's important to remember that although the Street Works team play a proactive part in the planning process, ultimately the responsibility for planning, supervising and carrying out any activities lies with the individual works promoters themselves.

The primary role of the Street Works team is to uphold our statutory network management duty to co-ordinate and proactively manage all activities that take place on the Shropshire Council highway network (approximately 18,000 activities per year), ensuring that any necessary disruption is minimised as much as possible.

Activities that have potential for causing disruption include:

• Utility works
• Our own highway works
• New developments and events
• Licences that can be applied for by private individuals for the use of skips/scaffolds on the highway, new sewer connections, new vehicle access etc. The team also ensure that that these activities comply with legislative requirements and take appropriate enforcement action to drive continual improvements in works performance. 

The West and Shires Permit Scheme (WaSP) came into force in April 2014 as it was recognised that this would give the highway authority more control over how activities are managed on the network, and to promote improved programming and communication, helping to reduce the impact of essential works.

Via WaSP the team also drives improvement by being able to effectively and reasonably enforce agreed permit conditions and related legislation – showing parity for both local authority and public utility works.