Birmingham, Cambridgeshire, Cardiff and Sandwell councils suggested that in the past few months it had been easier to recruit suitably-qualified candidates for positions in local highways and transportation departments than in the past.

Dave Crisp, major works manager at Sandwell council, said: ‘While we had some difficulty 12 months ago, in the last two months, we have been successful in recruiting. I think this is an indicator of the economic downturn.’

David Wicken, Croydon’s head of engineering and project co-ordination, said: ‘Our last advertisement for assistant engineers attracted more than 20 applicants and half-a-dozen were invited for interview. I guess the “crunch” has hit engineering.’

A spokesman for Cardiff claimed that the authority ‘receives numerous responses whenever a position like this is advertised’.

Graham Hughes, director of highways and access at Cambridgeshire County Council, suggested that, despite in the past ‘regularly having few or no applicants for jobs’, it appeared ‘the market is now easing up’.

However, the majority of respondents to the Surveyor questionnaire said that, taking the last 12 months as a whole, they continued to experience difficulties in filling posts. This was particularly the case in more specialist areas, such as traffic signal design, and officers with experience of traffic regulation orders.

Recruitment difficulties were variously attributed to: the reluctance of suitable candidates to relocate; lack of appreciation of the ‘wider benefits’ of working for a local authority; and a perception that ‘salaries cannot compete with consultancies’.

West Sussex said experienced transport planners ‘are almost impossible to find’, while Cumbria reported that repeated recruitment cycles over 12 months for a senior transport policy officer ‘brought no satisfactory response’, despite scaling down the qualification requirements. Manchester City Council had attempted and failed to recruit two traffic engineers in the last 12 months.