In the last three years 465 incidents of road worker abuse have been reported in Birmingham including a driver who threatened to chop off an operative’s head with an electric handsaw unless he was allowed through a closed road.

One worker was also shot at with a pellet gun, while another regularly receives homophobic abuse.

The Expect Respect social media campaign has been launched by the Integrated Programme Alliance (IPA), which delivers network improvement works across the city and was established by Birmingham City Council and Birmingham Highways Ltd, together with Kier, Arcadis, Tarmac, Highway Traffic Management (HTM) and WJ Group.

Kier Highways site supervisor, Paul, said: “The people I work with are not confrontational. They are good people, there to do a job that they have been instructed to do. Yet they have been threatened with machetes, shot at, driven at, had things thrown at them.

“And what for? Just because somebody wants to drive down the road that must be closed for safety reasons?

“Road workers are there to do a job and earn a living. We should respect that and afford the people in these jobs the right to earn that living.”

Expect Respect features stories from five different operatives who work across Birmingham. They each tell their lived experience of abuse and call on the public to make a change to their behaviour.

Dave Pugh, Technical Director at Birmingham Highways Limited, added: “Over 800 people across our IPA teams are working hard to improve the standards of the roads in Birmingham, and they deserve our respect.

“The work they do is vital to the safety and efficiency of our roads, and we hope that the proud people of Birmingham will support our workers and call out any incidences of abuse or assault to collectively help stamp out this shocking behaviour.”