Four million holes are dug in our roads each year — that’s one every seven seconds — to repair or install new pipes. The trouble is that the workmen often have no idea what they are going to find when they get down there.

There is no central record of where many of them are. The jumble of pipes and cables that exists in the underworld beneath our streets is a mess. The delays they cause create congestion, pollution and waste that costs an estimated £5 billion per year (£80 for every British citizen). On average there is one death and scores of serious injuries each year because workers hack into cables and pipes that they didn’t realise were there.

Ever wondered, as you headbutt the car windscreen in tears of frustration, why the same bit of road is dug up time and time again for no apparent reason? Well sometimes the holes aren’t dug in the right place because there isn’t enough data telling contractors where they should be drilling, so they have to start again. Or the utility companies insist on working separately so that a hole is opened four times instead of once.

There also appears to be a lack of co-operation between companies. Pre-privatisation, say the hole diggers, there was a spirit of helpfulness between the services. Today, some utility companies, it is whispered, would rather let you pickaxe a hole in their pipes than map where they are, because they can charge you for the repair.

The good news is that there is now a plan to end this madness. Scientists at the universities of Leeds and Nottingham have been given £2.2 million to develop a handheld screen that will show road diggers in 3-D every pipe, cable and underground obstacle beneath their feet. The bad news is it will take several years.

Which, for people like John Mellin, means more wasted time. Mellin is a street works supervisor, and has anecdotes that make you want to bang your head against a wall. Every time he needs to dig a hole to lay pipes he must pay for a plan from each utility that maps out its pipes and cables. Except that the plan does not claim to be accurate. Mellin, who lives in Salterforth, Lanc ashire, experienced the hell of roadworks bureaucracy eight years ago when building his own house. He planned to lay the sewer connection himself and obtained prices for water, gas and electricity connections. When he realised that he would expose all the other services while digging for the sewer he thought that if he could arrange for the connections to be made while his trench was open, disruption to traffic could be minimised and costs reduced.

The water supply company was indignant, and told him he had been given a price and could take it or leave it. The electricity company was prepared to share the trench, providing he paid its unspecified legal costs for drawing up the agreement, and bought insurance indemnifying it against any claims. The gas company had no objection and was prepared to reduce its price accordingly but unfortunately it mislaid the paperwork.

So, over a two-week period the same piece of highway was dug and filled four times. Four sets of traffic lights came and went and Mellin paid for it all. As he complained to the final gang of contractors the truth of the matter was pointed out to him. He had provided employment for four gangs of workmen and their bosses. If people did as he had proposed, three quarters of them would be laid off.

Here is Mellin’s diary of one simple job which should have taken four days but ended up taking ten and doubled the cost. It is a story of despair, incompetence and bloody-mindedness and explains, perhaps, why those in the industry develop a “sod you“ mentality. Read it and weep.

On paper the job was straightforward. The new house had been built at the edge of a quiet Yorkshire village. The public sewer ended 25 yards down the road. We had to connect the two. We had obtained plans of existing underground services from the utility companies, as required by the Street Works Act.

Since privatisation, all the utilities except BT charge for these plans, each bearing a disclaimer that they are not to be relied on. There are gas and water mains, an electricity cable and a telephone duct to avoid. There are also gas-service pipes from the main to houses across the road. Transco [now National Grid Gas] keeps no record of service-pipe location.

We start. Our first find is a mass of concrete. Slowly chipping it away, we find it encases the gas main. Three feet from its supposed position. Directly over the sewer we need to connect to. Only the sewer is 9in in diameter, not the 4in shown on the plan. And the sewer has been damaged, presumably by the gas main engineers, and “repaired” with a tin plate over the top. The sewage authority sends an inspector the following day who agrees the damage is pre-existing, but has no one available to repair it. To save time we agree to repair it. We have no 9in fittings. No builders’ merchant for miles around has 9in fittings. Some are located 50 miles away. The house owner’s wife is dispatched to collect them.