Concerning the inspection of highway structures (bridges, culverts, and similar structures) maintained by your authority.
This request is made with reference to the inspection framework set out in CS450 and the Well-managed Highway Infrastructure: A Code of Practice (Road Liaison Group), which together establish a maximum six-year interval between Principal Inspections unless a longer interval has been formally approved through a risk-based assessment.
For every highway structure within your authority’s inventory, please provide the following, ideally as a single spreadsheet with one row per structure:
1. a) The structure name and unique identifier or reference number.
This information can be found on this Devon County Council webpage.
1. b) The asset type (for example, bridge, culvert, retaining wall, or footbridge) and the span or length, where held.
This information can be found on this Devon County Council webpage.
The following asset descriptions have been used: bridge, footbridge, gantry, retaining wall, and signal cantilever. A bridge is defined as any spanning structure that is not classified under one of the other listed asset descriptions.
1. c) Confirmation of ownership and maintenance responsibility (i.e. whether the structure is maintained by your authority, a third party, or held under a Rights of Way designation), so that responsibility for each structure is unambiguous.
This information can be found on this Devon County Council webpage.
Please note that we do not know the owner for all highway structures, particularly retaining walls.
1. d) The date of the most recent General Inspection.
This information can be found on this Devon County Council webpage.
Some General Inspections (GI’s) will not be fully updated in our database. These will be held as individual documents in our records.
As a result, the GI dates provided in the spreadsheet are known to be incomplete. We are currently working to improve the reliability, accuracy, and completeness of this information.
1. e) The date of the most recent Principal Inspection.
This information can be found on this Devon County Council webpage.
Recent Principal Inspections (PIs) may not be fully updated in our database until all associated work has been completed, which can take some time. In addition, some PIs may have been undertaken but not yet formally recorded in the database.
We also use placeholder entries to indicate that a PI has been programmed for a particular year or to confirm that a site has been visited. These placeholder records have been excluded from the reported data.
As a result, the PI dates provided in the spreadsheet are known to be incomplete. We are currently working to improve the reliability, accuracy, and completeness of this information.
1. f) The scheduled date of the next Principal Inspection.
This information can be found on this Devon County Council webpage.
These dates are affected by the incomplete Principal Inspection (PI) records described above and should therefore be considered provisional. As a result, the reported dates may not provide a complete representation of inspection activity.
1. g) The inspection interval currently applied to the structure, in years, and whether this is the standard six-year interval under CS450 and the Well-managed Highway Infrastructure Code of Practice, or an extended interval.
This information can be found on this Devon County Council webpage.
Our existing Principal Inspection (PI) intervals were based on a subjective assessment of factors such as a structure’s complexity, condition, and importance. Under this approach, many bridges were not assigned a PI requirement, while those that were, received a six-year inspection interval. Retaining walls were not included in the PI programme.
We have long recognised the limitations of this approach and, in recent years, have implemented a separate ad hoc prioritisation process that considers all highway structures. This work has informed the development and implementation of a more robust, risk-based methodology aligned with the principles of CS 450, which we are continuing to refine and complete.
2. For any structure where the Principal Inspection interval has been extended to ten years or more under a risk-based assessment, please provide, for that structure individually rather than as a general policy statement:
2. a) The date on which the extension was approved.
2. b) The role or team responsible for approving the extension (for example, Principal Engineer or the Bridges and Structures Team), without needing the name of the individual officer.
2. c) The methodology or criteria used to justify the extension under your risk-based assessment process.
Regarding questions 2a), 2b) and 2c), we have completed a risk-based assessment of the Principal Inspection (PI) intervals for all our highway structures. The assessment is based on the principles of CS 450 but has been adapted to better reflect the characteristics and risks associated with our assets.
As the proposed methodology departs from the standard CS 450 approach in certain respects, we are seeking approval at Director level and through the appropriate Council governance processes. Once approved, the revised risk-based inspection regime will replace the existing PI interval framework.
3. The date on which your authority’s current risk-based variable interval policy (if you operate one) came into force, and what governed Principal Inspection intervals for structures last inspected before that date.
Our existing subjective risk-based approach for determining Principal Inspection (PI) intervals has been in place for several years. However, the date of its original implementation has not been recorded and therefore Devon County Council does not hold this information.
4. Confirmation of whether this disclosure represents your authority’s complete inventory of highway structures, or whether any structures, or any historical inspection records, are held separately (for example in a legacy asset management system not reflected in this return).
The inspection of bridges and retaining walls relating to the Public Rights of Way (PROW) network is divided between the PROW and Highway Structures (non-PROW) teams.
The Highway Structures team inspect all of the applicable retaining walls and the more significant (310 no.) PROW bridges. The criteria of a significant bridge is based on a minimum span for particular structural forms. This has been defined locally. These bridges are contained in the attached spreadsheet.
The remaining (non-significant) PROW bridges are inspected by PROW Wardens as part of routine inspections, details for which are summarised at Inspections and maintenance – Public rights of way. There are approximately 1,800 of these, and they do not have an individual reference code. PI’s are not carried out for these bridges.
The data regarding these bridges is exempt from disclosure under Regulation 12(4) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (Manifestly Unreasonable). This is because the way the information is stored means that to locate and retrieve the relevant bridge data from the PROW would take significantly longer than 18 hours, as the network is more than 5,000km.
The Council has considered the public interest in releasing this information and recognises there is a public interest in openness and transparency. However, there is a stronger public interest in not diverting staff resources from their core functions for the prolonged period of time it would take to answer this part of the request.
Please note that the spreadsheet also includes a small number of structures that are not highway assets.
5. Confirmation of whether any dates in the disclosed data are system defaults, placeholders, or otherwise not genuine inspection dates, and if so, which records these affect.
As discussed previously, any placeholder dates have been excluded from the spreadsheet and are not reflected in the reported data.
Please cover all structures currently on your inspection register, regardless of inspection history. If possible, please provide this information in electronic format as a spreadsheet (for example XLSX or CSV), with one structure per row, columns in the order requested above, and dates in DD/MM/YYYY format.