Guidance

Street works lane rental charges

Guidance for English local highway authorities on developing proposals to operate a lane rental scheme.

• From: Department for Transport
• Published: 26 January 2012
• Last updated: 17 December 2025
  Show all updates

  1. 17 December 2025

     Guidance and cost benefit analysis forms updated.

  2. 3 April 2025

     Street works lane rental charges updated.

  3. 17 March 2024

     Updated guidance to support the uptake of lane rental. Includes advice on joint lane rental schemes and revised cost-benefit analysis requirements.

  4. 9 July 2021

     The following changes have been made to the guidance. 1. Clarification of the parity principle. 2. Alterations to cost-benefit analysis calculation questions to ensure better results. 3. Additions that authorities must seek their own legal advice should they wish to impose lane rental charges and that more time in the application process may be required should revisions to the scheme be required. 4. Clarification that authorities will have to set out the limits of variations to their scheme within the application and scheme documents.

  5. 20 July 2019

     Guidance changed so that surplus lane rental revenue can be spent on ‘repairing pot holes caused by utility street works'.

  6. 27 September 2018

     Error corrected: calculator updated to fix a problem displaying the associated consumer and business benefits for each local authority.

  7. 2 September 2018

     Street works lane rental guidance updated for 2018 and calculator released.

  8. 26 January 2012

     First published.

Applies to England

Documents

Lane rental schemes: guidance for English highway authorities

HTML

Lane rental cost-benefit analysis form

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 32.2 KB

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Lane rental cost-benefit analysis form worked example

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 40.4 KB

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Details

A lane rental scheme allows a local highway authority to charge works promoters for the time that street and road works occupy the highway.

This guidance explains how to: 

• develop proposals for a lane rental scheme 
• apply to operate a scheme

The power for local highway authorities to implement and operate a lane rental scheme in England is subject to approval by the Secretary of State for Transport.

Apply for a lane rental scheme

Local highway authorities can submit an application using the Apply for a lane rental scheme form.