Transport Insights

National Highways delivered just three quarters of the actions in its secret “Enhanced Safety Plan” for the final year of the 2020-25 roads period (RP2) but its regulator has again claimed that the company is “doing everything that it can” to “try and meet” its casualty reduction target, which it is likely to miss badly.

The Office of Rail and Road’s (ORR) Annual assessment of National Highways’ performance – April 2024 to March 2025 includes a short section on road safety in which it appears to have once again moved the goalposts to spare National Highways’ blushes.

The ORR’s (third) Annual assessment of safety performance on the strategic road network, published in March stated:

National Highways’ enhanced safety plan set out 43 actions that the company would take to improve safety in the final year of RP2. These actions are in addition
to its existing commitments to improve safety that are set out as part of RIS2, and within annual delivery plans.

It revealed that by the end of January/February it had delivered just 22, comprising five road safety schemes, eight communication campaigns and nine ‘working with others’ actions.

The new report discloses that:

At the end of March 2025, the company had delivered 33 actions of the 43 actions that were included in its enhanced safety plan. It plans to deliver eight more by the end of 2025, with one scheme removed from the plan following objections from a local authority. The remaining action is related to the Roads Policing Review and will be taken forward once government publishes its response to the review.

Despite promising to “hold National Highways to account” for delivery of this plan, the regulator praises its efforts:

We consider that, in 2025, the company is doing everything that it can in the final year to try and meet the target…

There is a clear sleight of hand from the regulator in redefining the year that it is talking about, from the final year of RP2 (i.e. 2024-25) to “the final year” of the calendar year 2025, by the end of which serious casualties should be down by a half.

However, further to my post earlier today, the ORR seems to have dropped the claim that the 43 actions were “additional” to existing plans. I have asked it if it now accepts that it cannot verify this.