Transport Insights

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) seems to have lost more than the plot when it comes to finding out why National Highways did so little to achieve its casualty reduction target under the last road investment strategy (RIS 2).

It is now claiming to be unable to find the information that the company has given it about what it did or didn’t do to meet the target.

As usual, the problem is working out whether the ORR is covering for National Highways, covering for its own inability to hold the company to account, incompetent, or all three.

Let’s go back to what the regulator said in its December 2022 First Annual Assessment of safety performance on the strategic road network:

National Highways is working to develop and deliver an action plan aligned to its 2025 safety target

But by the December 2023 report, the emphasis had shifted away from a plan to meet the target to actions within the annual delivery plan, except that:

National Highways recognises that its Delivery Plan actions alone might not be sufficient to deliver the RIS2 safety KPI target.

In its (July 2024) Annual Assessment of National Highways’ performance April 2023 to March 2024, the regulator was quite critical of the company’s complacency:

…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.

And by the time of the next safety assessment (March 2025) the regulator was beginning to smell a rat:

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. This is so the company can demonstrate it has done everything reasonable to try and achieve its safety target in RP2. National Highways has agreed to provide this information to support our end of RP2 assessment.

Unfortunately, when it published what is literally its end of RP2 assessment, Annual Assessment of National Highways’ performance: end of the second road period April 2020 to March 2025, the ORR said nothing about this issue. Instead, it kicked the can down the road:

We will report on the final position against the RIS2 safety KPI after DfT publishes 2025 road casualty data in September 2026.

Eventually, as I reported, Elliot Shaw, chief customer and strategy officer, told MPs that claims of a plan to meet the target were pure fiction:

The target for RIS2 was set and we knew it was aspirational, so at the time we did not have …a clearly defined plan as it was reliant on broader factors

With the ORR making clear that it was asking National Highways to account for what it did and didn’t do early in the period, I asked it what the company had said. Its press office told me:

National Highways has provided some information in relation to this, but our enquiries are continuing…

Unwilling to be fobbed off, I turned the enquiry into a freedom of information request. But the ORR is too stupid to fall for that one.

Noting that:

Section 12(1) of the FOIA states that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate cost limit (which, in under the Fees Regulations 2004, is £600, at £25 an hour).

It said:

There is no single source of information that would have fulfilled the request

Citing the great difficulty it would have searching multiple inboxes and Sharepoint sites, the ORR claimed:

This resulted in an estimated cost of compliance of: Total: 218.31 hours (£5,485.75)

So, just to be clear, the ORR will not tell me what information National Highways agreed to provide to support its assessment of the company’s safety record because they have lost it and it would take two hundred and eighteen and a half hours to find it.

Are they that incompetent, or just disingenuous?

I’ve belatedly got a statement from the ORR press office. It starts off with the comical:

ORR is a transparent regulator.

Although to be fair, they could have said they were “committed” to being a transparent regulator. Then:

 the request was wide in scope and it would not have been possible to collate and complete within the cost limits. 

It was not wide in scope. It was a request to know what information “National Highways has agreed to provide”.

And then the really worrying bit:

We will be reporting on our position regarding National Highways and its safety targets in our forthcoming Annual Safety Report, which will include our assessment of progress made across the Road Period.

It doesn’t look as if the ORR will actually give National Highways’ explanation on this point, presumably because they have lost it.