Guidance Notes and Best Practice Guides
HA: Phase Two of the Highways Agency's Electronic Service Delivery for Abnormal Loads (ESDAL) system went live last week. ESDAL is a free-to-use website that should improve the planning, management and notification of Abnormal Indivisible Load (AIL) movements around the road network.
Phase Two encourages hauliers to make Special Order (SO) applications, for those loads which are very large, heavy and/or wide, online. The ESDAL service is free and requires no third party software. The last two phases will be introduced to the website in due course.
CLG: The Government has set out new guidance to ensure delivery of faster & cheaper property searches for homebuyers. Local authorities should now aim to provide access to their data within 1 working day to private search companies. In return, they will be able to recoup their costs by setting a ‘fair charge’ for improving access.
The government has also published a consultation document which seeks views on proposals for the future direction of Local Authority charging for property search services. It progresses one of the key recommendations by the OFT in its market study of property search services.
Press release ~ Go od practice and guidance, Reports and summaries ~ Local Authority Charges for Property Search Services - A consultation paper
MoJ: Birmingham peer and Government Minister Lord Hunt has welcomed a new handbook and guidance produced by the Electoral Commission and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).
Measures to improve security & confidence at the polls, which came into force January 2007, include:
* New offences for supplying false information and for falsely applying for a postal or proxy vote
* Provision of signatures & dates of births for postal vote applications which enable checks to be carried out
* The introduction of a marked register of postal votes received
Press release ~ Guidance on preventing and detecting electoral malpractice ~ Guidance on policing elections in England and Wales ~ The Electoral Commission - Elections 2008 ~ Electoral Administration Act 2006 ~ 'Governance of Britain' Green Paper ~ Response to Electoral Commission report on absent voting identifiers ~ Government response to the Committee on Standards in Public Life's eleventh report, 'Review of the Electoral Commission' ~ The Government's response to the Electoral Commission's recommendations on the May 2007 electoral pilot schemes
