East Sussex incident highlights dangers faced by highways staff
A raging driver threatened a Balfour Beatty highways worker with a knife in East Sussex last week.
The attack was revealed by Balfour Contract Director Marc Woodall during an ITV report on road worker abuse.
Woodall said: “Only in the last week in East Sussex, we had an incident where we had a road closure in place.
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“A member of the public was frustrated and wanted to get through. When our staff refused, that individual pulled a knife and physically and verbally threatened them.”
Balfour Beatty Living Places is currently working on a £297m highways and infrastructure services contract for East Sussex County Council.
The television reports also featured Balfour Beatty Section Engineer Amit Soorajbally on the £355m A63 improvement project near Hull.
Soorajbally said: “We have experienced verbal abuse and threats. In one instance, a member of public started punching and kicking our equipment and threatening our staff on site. This was very scary and it becomes difficult to work under these conditions.”
Balfour Beatty has put in place a number of measures to protect those at risk of roadworker abuse, including the roll-out of body cameras as well as increased mobile CCTV to accurately capture and record incidents.
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