Transport Insights

A senior National Highways official has told MPs that the company did not create a plan to meet its 2025 casualty reduction target – which it almost certainly missed by a long way – because achieving the target was dependent on factors outside its control.

The admission finally provides an answer to questions raised, but apparently not followed up, by the company’s regulator about why it did so little early in the 2020-25 roads period (RP2) to achieve its target to reduce killed and seriously injured (KSI) casualties by 50% against a 2005-09 baseline.

Appearing before the Transport Committee on Wednesday, National Highways bosses were challenged by Labour MP Scott Arthur about the company’s expected failure to meet its target.

Elliot Shaw, chief customer and strategy officer, said: “We did not have a kind of clearly defined plan because it was reliant on broader factors.”

This “broader factors” argument is consistent with National Highways’ excuses for missing safety targets over many years and was part of its attempt not to have a casualty reduction target in the new road investment strategy, but I think this is the first time it has been given as a reason for not having a plan to meet the 2025 target.

It is also consistent with comments from regulator the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), which was highly critical of the company in its Annual Assessment of National Highways’ performance: April 2023 to March 2024:

While we recognise that not all the actions to reduce KSIs on the SRN are fully within the company’s control we believe that if National Highways had been more proactive in recognising the risks earlier in the road period and developed more robust safety plans sooner this would have increased the likelihood of meeting the target.

The regulator also said last year in its Third Annual Assessment of Safety Performance on the Strategic Road Network:

As we come to the end of the road period it is imperative that National Highways provides us with details of the actions that it took to improve safety at the start of RP2 and sets out the evidence it used to identify why these were the most effective interventions at the time. The company has agreed to provide this information to support our end of RP2 assessment.

However, the end of RP2 assessment provides no such information but instead changes the subject:

While we recognise that not all actions to reduce KSIs on the SRN are fully within National Highways’ control, it is important that the company continues to use its position in the sector to influence, and work closely with other agencies, to support its longer term vision of zero harm on the SRN.”

As usual, the ORR failed to follow through on promises to hold National Highways to account.

Similarly, despite saying in 2023:

It is also important that National Highways continues to focus on its longer-term ambition of achieving zero harm on the SRN by 2040.

The ORR allowed it to put the target back by a whole decade to 2050, as committee chair Ruth Cadbury noted on Wednesday.