What are reinstatement works? A contractor’s definition

Reinstatement works are the restoration of a road, footway or verge after it has been excavated for utility or street works, rebuilding every layer from the bottom of the trench to the finished surface to legally defined standards. In UK highway and utility work, reinstatement is not tidying up after a dig. It is a statutory duty with its own specification, categories and guarantee periods.

The term is crowded, though. Most searches for the reinstatement works meaning land on insurance and commercial lease pages first, because the same words are used in those fields for entirely different things. This guide covers the construction sense: what reinstatement works are, where the duty comes from, and what the work involves on site. It is the work a reinstatement works contractor is brought in to deliver, from backfill through to the finished surface.

What reinstatement works means (and what it doesn’t)

In construction and utility work, reinstatement works means putting a street back after it has been opened. A water main is repaired, a cable is laid or a connection is made, and the excavation that made the work possible is then rebuilt: trench backfilled in compacted layers, road structure restored, surface matched to what surrounds it. The phrase covers carriageways, footways, footpaths, cycle tracks and verges, which is why you will also see road reinstatement and highway reinstatement used to mean the same thing.

The confusion arises because reinstatement simply means returning something to a former state, and several industries use the word for their own version of that.

The legal duty: NRSWA and the SROH

Section 70 of the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 places a duty on anyone carrying out street works to reinstate the street once the work is finished. Section 71 requires the materials, workmanship and standard of that reinstatement to follow a statutory code of practice. Failing the duty is a criminal offence under the Act.

The code is the Specification for the Reinstatement of Openings in Highways, the SROH. The fourth edition was published in May 2020 and has been statutory guidance in England since 10 May 2021. The SROH prescribes the permitted materials, the standards of workmanship and the performance the finished surface must meet for profile, regularity, structural integrity and skid resistance. We have unpacked what the SROH actually says in its own guide.

Who the duty falls on is broader than many assume. The SROH defines an undertaker as anyone with a statutory right to execute street works or the holder of a street works licence. So the duty is not only carried by water companies, gas networks and telecoms operators. A developer or private party opening the highway under a Section 50 licence takes on exactly the same reinstatement obligations.

Immediate, interim and permanent reinstatement

The Act recognises two states of reinstatement. An interim reinstatement places and compacts the reinstatement layers to finished surface level, including any temporary materials, so the street can reopen. A permanent reinstatement completes every layer up to and including the finished surface. An interim reinstatement must normally be made permanent within six months.

The SROH adds a third defined term that sits alongside those two states: immediate reinstatement. Immediate reinstatement is the orderly replacement of excavated material, reasonably compacted to surface level, usually with a cold applied surfacing, used when an excavation has to carry traffic straight away. The distinction is worth being precise about, because most summaries blur it. Interim and permanent are the two states the statutory duty runs on; immediate reinstatement is a technique the specification defines for getting a road open fast.

Every permanent reinstatement is then guaranteed. The guarantee period runs for two years, or three years for deep openings, which the SROH defines as openings where the cover over the apparatus is greater than 1.5 m. The clock starts on completion of the permanent reinstatement, not on the date the authority is notified. During that period the highway authority can inspect the reinstatement, and one that fails the performance requirements must be repaired at the undertaker's cost.

What reinstatement works involve on site

On site, reinstatement runs the excavation in reverse. Material is placed around the new or repaired apparatus, the trench is backfilled and compacted in layers, and the sub-base, binder course and surface course are rebuilt to suit the road type. Compaction is specified at every stage, because settlement is what turns a tidy reinstatement into a defect a year later.

The scope is wider than tarmac. Reinstatement works take in footways and verges as well as carriageways, resetting ironwork such as frames and covers, relaying kerbs, slabs and block paving, and replacing road markings and studs. Section 70 of the Act also requires permanent reinstatement to include features designed to assist people with a disability, such as tactile paving, a requirement written directly into the legislation.

One last distinction helps the terminology settle. Street works are works carried out by undertakers, the utilities and licence holders, on or under the street. Road works are the highway authority's own repairs and improvements. The reinstatement duty described here belongs to street works: if you opened the road, you put it back.

Reinstatement is the part of a utility job the public actually sees, and the part the highway authority judges for years afterwards. For what the service covers in practice, from backfill and sub-base through to surface courses, kerbs and white works, see our reinstatement works service.