Transport Insights

National Highways’ delivery plan and a separate “safety action plan” for the current financial year will be published “this summer”, the government-owned company has said, following a delay to last year’s delivery plan and the outright suppression of an “enhanced safety plan” for the year.

However, National Highways, the Department for Transport (DfT) and regulator the Office of Rail and have Road (ORR) all refused freedom of information (FOI) requests to release the safety action plan until the company can put its spin on it in the delivery plan, which is always a glossy promotional document produced at public expense to boost the company’s public image.

During the current financial year, the government-owned company is operating on a £4.8bn single-year settlement between road investment strategies, known as the Interim Period.

The Interim Settlement document gives significant detail on what National Highways is required to do during the year, including stating that it “must deliver a series of safety improvements set out in its Safety Action Plan for 2025/26” to support progress towards achieving its target for reducing killed and seriously injured (KSI) casualties – a target that it is likely to miss.

Appearing before the Commons Transport Committee in April, transport secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs that part of the interim settlement was “set aside to be focused on further investments to improve safety”. She added: “We have been clear with National Highways that it must deliver a series of safety improvements. It has set that out in its safety action plan for 2025‑26.”

In response to a parliamentary question from committee chair Ruth Cadbury MP asking when the plan would be published, roads minister Lilian Greenwood said it plan “will form part of National Highways 2025-26 delivery plan for the Interim Settlement which will be published in the coming months”. That could have seen the two documents withheld until next year.

Because National Highways’ safety record is so poor, the ORR required it to draw up an “enhanced plan” for 2024-25, with additional actions cut cut casualties. However, it then colluded with National Highways to suppress the document to shield the company from scrutiny.

Although publication of both 2025-26 plans in the summer would be an improvement, the decisions by all three bodies to withhold the safety action plan in the meantime is a deliberate attempt to control the narrative around it by applying an FOI exemption aimed at documents that are being prepared for publication, rather than functional documents.

For example, National Highways claimed that detail within the delivery plan “provides context to the wider landscape National Highways are operating within for the year 2025-26 and the role that the Safety Action Plan 2025-26 has within that”. It added: “There is a risk that without this wider narrative the purpose and role of the Safety Action Plan is not fully realised.”

Assuming that “realised” means “understood”, there is no reason why the safety plan could not be published now and its purpose and role understood when the delivery plan is published.

The National Highways website currently has a page about its road investment plans to March 2026 with a non-operational link inviting users to “Find out more about the Interim Settlement and our Delivery Plan for 2025-2026”.