Transport Insights

A transport minister has confirmed that we will be kept in the dark about the costs of individual “enhancement” schemes when the next road investment strategy (RIS 3) is published in March, underlining just how little transparency there is about roads spending.

It follows the Department for Transport (DfT) still refusing to say how much the Structures Fund that it announced in June will actually be worth and how much the four-year budget for local road enhancements will be, even after clarifying that there will be a total of £1bn for both.

Responding to yet another question from shadow transport secretary Richard Holden – this time about whether the full scheme costs for all projects will be published in the final RIS 3 document – Simon Lighwood said:

The third Road Investment Strategy (RIS3) will be published in March 2026 and will include a total funding line for all enhancements to the strategic road network to be delivered during the period 2026-2031.

This does mean that we will be able to judge whether the DfT has put its money where its mouth is over pledges in the draft RIS of “a greater focus than ever before on the maintenance and renewal of the network”.

Without even a headline figure so far for the cost of enhancements, or even the capital/resource split in the £25bn five-year budget, it is impossible to judge this pledge.

The current – totally untransparent – part of the process involves the Office of Rail and Road secretly reviewing National Highways’ (unpublished) draft Strategic Business Plan to assess whether the £25bn can deliver the objectives set out in the RIS, “taking account of matters such as likely inflationary and other cost pressures over the period”.

Giving this explanation in response to a separate question from Holden, Lightwood didn’t answer the part of the question about whether funding will be amended (i.e. increased) if cost assumptions have to be changed.

Another possibility is that enhancements might be cut back to suit the funding but another likely possibility is that the planned schemes encroach onto the so far unstated share of the budget intended for maintenance and renewal.

Bizarrely, despite the draft business plan being the mechanism by which the cost of the individual schemes are evaluated so that they can form the headline figure in the RIS, those individual costs will not be made public until the final strategic business plan is published, after the RIS is finalised.