Almost a third of them, 12,608, were from utility companies asking for permission to dig up a section of the borough's 700 miles of roads in order to lay pipes or cables, or to carry out repairs.

Wigan's highway works, street lighting and traffic work sections were responsible for the majority of the requests to carry out works, submitting 16,299, 8,546 and 1,146 proposals respectively.

There were 170 requests to carry out private works, such as laying private drains, taking the total number of roadworks requests to 38, 769 in 2009, according to Wigan Council figures.

Although they relate to proposals and do not give the actual number of works carried out, included are some long term schemes which required traffic controls such as temporary traffic lights.

However, many works require no traffic flow measures at all.
Tony Hemingway, Wigan Council's streetworks co-ordinator is responsible for planning where and when roadworks take place.
He said: "People have a lot of misconceptions about how we deal with roadworks.

"The fact is that when receive requests for road works from the utility companies or our own highways team we can't refuse as they have a legal right to place cables and pipes under the road.

"Our job is to try and co-ordinate the vast number of these jobs safely for the public and also to make them run as smoothly as they possibly can."

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