Every UK Driver Wins as DfT Fines Weekend Roadworks Overruns £10,000 a Day

From 5 January 2026, firms that leave roadworks open past their agreed finish date face overrun charges of up to £10,000 a day for every day of the delay, including Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays, closing a gap that let contractors dodge weekend penalties.
Fixed penalty notices for street works offences doubled on the same date, with some penalties rising from £500 to £1,000 and others from £120 to £240.
A second reform in force from 10 April 2026 gives electric vehicle chargepoint operators the same fast-track street works permits already used by gas and water firms, cutting the paperwork that has held back public charger installation.

DfT Closes the Loophole That Let Roadworks Overrun Into Your Weekend for Free

Anyone who has sat behind a set of unattended traffic lights on a Sunday afternoon, work supposedly finished days earlier, now has a reason to expect fewer repeats. The Department for Transport has closed a gap in the rules that governed how long a contractor could legally occupy a stretch of road, and it did it by removing a single word from the regulations.

The old system charged contractors an overrun fee only for “working days” spent beyond their agreed completion date. A firm that finished a job on a Thursday instead of the planned Tuesday paid for two extra working days. If the same job dragged into a weekend, those two days cost nothing at all, as Saturday and Sunday were not counted as working days under the old wording. The Street and Road Works (Charges and Penalties) (Amendments) (England) Regulations 2025, in force from 5 January 2026, strips out that carve-out. Overrun charges now apply to every calendar day beyond the agreed end date, weekends and bank holidays included.

Who This Hits

Every driver who uses local roads is affected by how quickly street works clear, whether that is a gas main repair, a broadband cable trench or a resurfacing job. Roadworks that linger for an extra week cost commuters time twice over: once in the delay itself, and again in the diversions, bus timetable disruption and queuing traffic that build up around a site that should have reopened days earlier, the same kind of hold-up that has already pushed fines at pinch points like the Dartford Crossing to record levels.

The people who feel the new rule most directly are the utility firms, telecoms contractors and highway maintenance crews who apply for permits to dig up a road in the first place. Under the old regime, a contractor with a tight schedule elsewhere had little financial reason to prioritise finishing a job before a weekend. Under the new one, every day counts, and a delay that stretches from Friday to Monday can now cost a contractor tens of thousands of pounds rather than nothing.

The Numbers Behind the Reform

The overrun charge itself is not new; local authorities have been able to levy daily charges of up to £10,000 for the most disruptive types of overrun on the busiest roads under an earlier version of the regulations. What changed on 5 January 2026 is the scope of when that charge applies. By removing the word “working” from the relevant clause, the regulations extend the charge to every day of overrun rather than roughly five in seven.

Fixed penalty notices, the smaller fines issued for specific street works offences such as failing to notify a council of works or breaching noticing rules, doubled at the same time. Regulation 24 penalties that stood at £500 now stand at £1,000, and penalties that stood at £120 now stand at £240. The Department for Transport’s own guidance frames the change as closing an incentive to let work run past its planned finish, rather than scheduling it realistically from the outset.

Faster Permits for EV Chargepoints Too

A second, related change reached in force on 10 April 2026. Updated statutory guidance from the Department for Transport confirmed that electric vehicle chargepoint operators can now apply for street works permits on the same footing as statutory undertakers such as gas, water and telecoms firms. Previously, a chargepoint operator digging a trench to connect a new public charger to the grid needed a section 50 licence under the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991, a slower and pricier route than the permit system used by established utilities.

For the roughly four in ten UK households without off-street parking, who rely on public chargepoints to run an electric car at all, this change removes one of the quieter obstacles to getting more chargers installed on residential streets. A council permit scheme still governs when and where the work can happen, and the overrun charges described above apply to chargepoint installation work just as they apply to any other street works, but the licensing step itself is quicker and cheaper for the operator to clear.

Part of a Wider Push on Roadworks Complaints

The overrun charge reform sits inside a broader effort by the Department for Transport to respond to a long-running driver complaint: that street works drag on for weeks with nobody visibly working on site, and that the penalties on offer were too small to change contractor behaviour. Industry bodies including HAUC (UK), the group that coordinates how councils and utility firms plan street works, published updated guidance in March 2026 reflecting both the overrun change and the new EV chargepoint permit route, giving councils and works promoters a single, current reference for the rules that apply to any dig on a public road from April 2026 onward.

The reform also tightens the fixed penalty regime around notification failures, the paperwork breaches that happen when a contractor starts digging without properly telling the council or without displaying the right signage. Doubling those penalties gives councils a sharper tool to use against repeat offenders without needing to escalate every case to a full prosecution, which is slower and costlier for local authorities to pursue than an on-the-spot fixed penalty.

What It Means for Your Journey

None of this guarantees an end to roadworks delays. Councils still have to apply the overrun charges consistently, and a contractor with a real difficult job, such as one held up by an unexpected gas leak or a buried cable nobody mapped correctly, can still apply for an extension without penalty. The point of the reform is to remove the financial reason for a contractor to let a job slide into a weekend when there is no such reason for the delay.

For an ordinary driver stuck at a temporary light or diverted around a dug-up junction, the practical test will come the next time a job is scheduled to finish on a Friday. If the £10,000-a-day charge works as intended, that stretch of road should reopen closer to the planned date, rather than staying closed through a weekend nobody was ever charged for.

What Drivers Should Do

Drivers who want to check whether a nearby roadworks site is running to schedule can look it up on the government’s Street Manager service, which lists the planned start and end dates for licensed street works across England. If a site is still active well past its listed finish date, that is worth reporting to the local council responsible for the road, as councils rely on this kind of reporting to identify contractors who are treating the overrun charge as a cost of doing business rather than a genuine deterrent.

Anyone waiting on a new public chargepoint near their home can also expect the installation process to move a little faster from here, now that chargepoint operators are working through the same quicker permit route as other utility firms, rather than the older licensing system that added weeks to some projects.

Sources:
Department for Transport, “Street works permit schemes” statutory guidance, gov.uk, updated 19 March 2026, applicable from 10 April 2026: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/street-works-permit-schemes
The Street and Road Works (Charges and Penalties) (Amendments) (England) Regulations 2025 (SI 2025/1074)
The Traffic Management Permit Scheme (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/312): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2026/312/made