Virgin Media fined £3,000 for non-compliant street work practices

Transport for London (TfL) has successfully prosecuted Virgin Media for five streetworks related offences.

Virgin Media failed to provide details of the exact location, dimensions and other engineering information for roadworks in Wandsworth High Street, Stonecote Hill and Wickham Road between October and December 2017.

The company was issued with fixed penalty notices for breaching Street Works Regulations and causing a significant impact on the road network.

Having failed to pay the charges on time, Virgin Media was prosecuted by TfL and, on June 20, it was fined £3,000 and ordered to contribute £3,494 towards the legal costs incurred by TfL.

Since 2010 Virgin Media has paid out £20,000 in fines for various street works offences.

In sentencing, the Court remarked that; “these offences appear to occur quite regularly according to the records presented to me, which showed a total of 66 fixed penalty notices have been incurred in the last year alone. That to me is a pattern of carelessness towards your compliance obligations and not acceptable. Had the fixed penalty notice of only £120 been paid in each case, the Court’s time would not have been unduly taken dealing with these cases.”

Glynn Barton, TfL's Director of Network Management, said: "We work hard to keep London moving and, as part of that, we need the cooperation of utility companies. We have prosecuted Virgin Media 16 times for street works offences since 2010 and they still continue to breach the rules. We are working with Virgin Media and other utility companies to assist them with notification compliance and to ensure that roadworks are carried out properly, with minimal disruption to road users.”

The table below sets out the number of times TfL has successfully prosecuted utility companies since 2010: