It is hard to find a pavement or stretch of road these days which hasn't been dug up several times by utility companies of one sort or another. The criss-crossing of different shades of bitumen with lumps and bumps that have to be negotiated to get along the street has become almost an accepted part of British life.

So there are two pieces of good news today for people who find these intrusions into the street scene both inconvenient and aesthetically offensive.

The proposed merger between the National Grid company and Lattice to create Britain's biggest utility company will hopefully mean better co-ordination of work, with excavations for gas and electricity being carried out at the same time rather than independently. For too long we have had to put up with holes being dug up by one utility and eventually filled in only for another hole to be opened up, sometimes on the very same spot, by another service within weeks.

And the invention by Yorkshire Water scientists of a type of "X-ray specs" to enable workers to see pipes deep underground should theoretically avoid the need to dig up large tracts of road and pavement to locate the source of a specific problem. Hopefully the benefit from these developments is that roads will be dug up on fewer occasions and with greater accuracy. It is a big step towards tidier streets.

The need now is for the Government to ensure that all those who dig up our roads and streets, for whatever reason, are forced to reinstate then promptly and with proper resurfacing of the whole affected area rather than the present unsightly patchwork method.