ABSTRACT
Making up New Streets Who should be responsible for ‘making up’ and maintaining new roads (in law ‘private streets’) has often been the source of controversy (usually related to: who pays and how much?) when following the enactment of the Highways Act 1835 only highways of a certain specified construction standard would be ‘adopted’ as ‘highways maintainable at public expense’ whilst for others no one was responsible and they became ‘private streets’. In more modern times this has had the result that some roads (many of those on private housing estates built between the wars are a good example), were not made up for literally years and that those that were often fell into disrepair or were substandard and were never adopted by the local authority.
