Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if his Department will take steps to improve the safety of unadopted streets, including those on marked cycle routes, that are in poor condition and pose a significant risk to cyclists and other road users.

The responsibility for the management of unadopted roads rests with the owner, or more usually the frontagers, those who own property that fronts, or abuts, the road concerned. Neither the Government nor the local authority has any obligation over works on unadopted roads.

Section 230 of the 1980 Act empowers the ‘street works authority’ (i.e. the local authority) to order the frontagers to repair an unadopted or private road in the event that said repairs are needed to “obviate danger to traffic”.