Highways Agreements & Licences

 

Four sections of the Highways Act 1980 come up again and again, and they get mixed up constantly, including on council websites. This page exists to point you at the right one.

The question that sorts almost every case: are you working on a road that already exists, or making one that does not?

 

 

The quick answer

What you are doing	What you need
A dropped kerb for your driveway	Section 184
A new junction, signals or a turning lane on the existing road	Section 278
Building a new estate road you want the council to adopt	Section 38
You already built the road and now want it adopted	Section 37

 

Many larger housing schemes need both a Section 278 and a Section 38: a Section 278 where works are required to the existing highway, and a Section 38 where new estate roads are intended for adoption. A smaller scheme may need only one, or neither.

 

Existing road, or new road?

 

This is the distinction everything turns on, and it is worth spending thirty seconds on.

Section 278 is the existing road. The public highway is already there, already adopted, already the council’s to maintain. You need it changed: a new junction into your site, a right-turn lane, signals, a crossing. The works are the authority’s to carry out, and you pay for them.

Section 38 is the new road. You are building it, to the authority’s standard, and you want the council to take it on afterwards so it becomes maintainable at public expense. You build; they adopt.

One ends with the council’s existing road being different. The other ends with the council having a road it did not have before.

 

Section 38 or Section 37?

 

Both get a new road adopted. The difference is when you agree it.

Section 38 is agreed before you build. You know the standard, you know the terms, and your plot buyers’ solicitors can see an agreement is in place.

Section 37 does without an agreement altogether. You give notice that you intend to dedicate the road, at least three months before you dedicate it, and you build at your own risk. It carries no power to demand a commuted sum, which is its one real attraction, but you build at full cost before you find out whether it will be adopted, and the council can go to the magistrates arguing the road is not of sufficient utility to the public, and even once it certifies the road you must keep it in repair for a further twelve months before it is adopted. Almost everyone uses Section 38, and the reason is certainty.

The Section 38 page covers both, and explains why Section 37 is an imperfect substitute.

 

When it is a dropped kerb, not an agreement at all

 

If you are a householder wanting to park on your front garden, none of the above applies to you.

A vehicle crossing over a footway or verge is section 184, and it is a different creature: no agreement, no bond, no commuted sum. You ask the highway authority, it decides, and it may say no. There is no right to one.

It also sits alongside a separate question: whether you need planning permission for the crossing, which depends on the road classification and one or two other things. Our page on dropped kerbs covers both consents.

Rule of thumb: a driveway is a Section 184; a junction serving a development is a Section 278.

 

Who you are actually dealing with

 

Not always who you expect.

These matters sit with the relevant highway or street authority, not the planning department. Sections 37, 38, 184 and 278 are highway powers; a Section 50 licence is granted by the street authority under the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991. In a unitary area that may be the same council, though rarely the same team. In a two-tier area the district or borough handles planning while the county normally handles the highway. The strategic road network is dealt with separately by National Highways.

The practical consequence: your planning permission does not deliver your highways consent, and the two run on separate timescales. A permission that looks granted can sit unimplementable for months. And a highways agreement is frequently required by a planning condition or a Section 106, which is what catches people out. It is not an optional extra, it is the mechanism by which the permission becomes buildable.

 

What they all cost

 

We do not print figures on these pages because there are no national rates. Each authority sets and revises its own charges. A figure copied from another council, or from an old schedule, may bear little relation to the cost of your scheme.

What you can plan for is the shape. The works themselves. A bond or deposit, released on adoption. The authority’s own costs, including staff time and overheads, which for a Section 278 are expressly recoverable by statute. Often a commuted sum towards future maintenance. None of it is your planning application fee, which is separate and separately payable.

Ask your authority, in writing, early. It is the only figure that is true for your scheme.

 

And then there are the licences

 

Everything above is an agreement: a negotiated deal about a road. But a development often needs a licence too, which is a different thing: you apply, the highway authority grants or refuses, and it is not an agreement at all.

The common one is a Section 50 street works licence, needed when you place private apparatus (a pipe, cable or duct) in the public highway and you are not a utility company. It looks like a formality and is not: it makes you an “undertaker” under the 1991 Act, with real duties attached.

Others in the same family, such as a Section 171 licence to open the highway, work the same way. We are building these out; Section 50 is covered in full now.

Developer contributions & planning agreements

 

 

Highways Agreements Page Updated: 25th August 2026