The gist of the story seems to be both that some councils have wrongly been rated red and others undeservedly rated as green.
The twist in the tale, as I mentioned yesterday, is that councils with a red rating, deserved or not, will get extra cash.
As transport secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs yesterday, the ratings are based on three underlying scorecards,
measuring local road condition, the level of capital spend on highways maintenance and the extent to which local authorities have adopted best practice in highways management.
Highways mainly focuses on complications over capital spend, with suggestions that data is not consistent, either because the DfT has not explained the nuances very well, or councils have got the wrong end of the stick, or both:
The Mail/This is Money has an interesting story about a North-South divide that has developed over the installation of public charge points for electric vehicles, slightly spoilt by some gratuitous Labour-bashing.
First, there is a suggestion that the rate of installation is now on a downward curve:
A mere 628 public chargers were installed in December, taking the total number added last year to 14,097, according to industry group Zapmap.
That was down nearly 30 per cent on the 19,834 installed in 2024 and more than 2,500 fewer than in 2023.
On the subject of location, it does seem that close to half are in London and the South East:
Of the 87,796 chargers installed, 27,895 are in London and the South East has 11,136.
By contrast, there are just 2,550 in the North East. Westminster alone has more public charging points than Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle combined.
Ginny Buckley of Electrifying.com is quoted as saying:
The mixed messages coming from the latest Department for Transport (DfT) press release on English local authority approaches to road maintenance are mind-blowing, with the idea that prevention is better than cure getting lost in simplistic headlines.
How well is your council fixing your roads?
New map rates how record government pothole funding is being used.
Absent from the top line is the idea that fixing roads and filling in potholes is a sign of failure.
new red, amber, green ratings let public see which local highway authorities are fixing potholes effectively
government’s record £7.3 billion funding announced at budget is helping councils get on with fixing nation’s roads
record investment will drive real improvement, saving drivers money by preventing costly repairs and restoring pride in communities
The press release explains that red, amber, green (RAG) ratings are based on three key areas:
the condition of local roads
how much LHAs are spending on road repairs
whether they are following best practice in maintaining highways
Eventually, the DfT gets around to explaining what they mean by best practice, and it isn’t “patching up potholes”:
Those that scored ‘green’, like Leeds, Sandwell and Manchester, were able to demonstrate they are following best practice, such as investing in more long-term preventative measures rather than just patching up potholes, while also maintaining good road conditions and investing significantly into improving local roads.
Despite all the tough talk, the DfT has created a system of perverse incentives, where the councils with a red rating get *more* money.
I’ve been catching up with the government’s response to the responses to the pavement parking consultation – i.e. what they are actually planning to do – as well as the responses to the response to the responses.
The weight of opinion that I have seen is that ministers have bottled it by going for the halfway house of giving individual councils (in England outside London) the power to take action and I wonder again why it took so long to do so little.
Let’s start with the convoluted way the Department for Transport (DfT) framed its approach in yesterday’s press release:
New local powers to keep pavements clear for those who rely on them most
You can see what they are getting at, but it’s also bizarre to suggest that pavements (footways in the trade) will only be kept clear for those who rely on them the most. There seems to be an obsession among spin doctors to highlight protecting “the most vulnerable”, for example when cutting benefits.
There’s a lot in the government’s road safety strategy, finally published yesterday, and specifically a lot of consultation about changing things, largely for the better.
The adoption of a casualty reduction target, albeit one that still envisages that large numbers of people will be killed and seriously injured on the roads in 10 years’ time, is largely welcome and welcomed and of course it allows the spin doctors to claim that the strategy will save thousands of lives.
I’d like to focus on one aspect of one of the consultations as it illustrates how far ministers are and are not willing to go to save lives. The strategy says:
Ensuring all new vehicles made in Great Britain have 18 new vehicle safety technologies
The government is committed to ensuring that new vehicles entering the market in Great Britain comply with the very latest safety standards.
For a start, surely “made” is an error. They mean all new vehicles sold here.
And when I see the PR language of “committed to ensuring” I always ask why they didn’t just say they will ensure it.
There is in fact a consultation on Mandating vehicle safety technologies in GB type approval, which includes a number of emergency braking technologies. Didn’t ministers consult on changing the law on pavement parking in 2020? (and are finally doing something in 2026)
The consultation document makes clear that a key issue is aligning with EU-wide General Safety Regulations, but the inclusion of autonomous emergency braking has been labelled as “Dev’s law”.
This reflects the campaign run by Meera Naran MBE, whose eight-year-old son Dev was killed in 2018 when the car his grandfather was driving stopped on the a smart motorway section of the M6 and was hit by a lorry.
Since then, his mother Meera has campaigned non-step to have the Highway Agency’s policy around smart motorways revoked, as well as specific measures such as compulsory braking technology.
Following Dev’s death, Keith Barrett supported the family at inquest and successfully concluded a personal injury claim on their behalf against the insurers of the vehicles involved. The Telegraph initially highlighted the case and supported Meera’s campaign to overturn the widespread introduction of smart motorways.
After hearing evidence, the West Midlands area coroner Emma Brown issued a Section 28 Preventing Future Deaths report – the most serious ruling open to a coroner – warning that further lives were at risk with the continued use of ‘smart’ motorways to ease traffic congestion. She said turning the hard shoulder into an active lane can ‘confuse motorists’.
Ms Brown also highlighted that the Highway’s Agency staff failed to spot the car, despite numerous CCTV cameras covering the route and voiced her concern that no discussions were in place to improve monitoring of smart motorways.
Meanwhile, Meera also campaigned for Dev’s Law to make mandatory braking technology that automatically slows a vehicle when sensors detect an impending collision (AEB).
Automated emergency braking and other technologies will save lives but for years there will be many cars legally on the road without them and there will continue to be fatal crashes on smart motorways because the technology that is meant to prevent them is not up to the job.
With the government due to publish its long-delayed road safety strategy tomorrow and selected highlights being fed to newspapers, it’s worth going back to what the Times reported in August.
Drivers over 70 who fail eye tests face ban in road safety overhaul
Ministers are preparing the biggest shake-up of driving rules for two decades, including a reduction in the drink-drive limit
The measures are expected to be contained in a new road safety strategy, due to be published in the autumn.
Older drivers face eyesight tests, alcohol limits could be tightened and penalty points given for not wearing seatbelts under plans to improve road safety.
The strategy is reported to have targets for cutting thousands of deaths and serious injuries over the next 10 years, which means, if we take them at their word, that a lot of deaths and serious injuries could have been prevented if it had come out a few months ago.
With Parliament back in action, a Labour MP has asked an interesting follow-up question about the National Highways snafu that saw thousands of innocent drivers wrongly fined and many more speeding drivers escape prosecution.
And got a total non-answer from the man who has made a ministerial career of keeping information from the public.
… with reference to National Highways press release entitled Fix being rolled out after variable speed camera anomaly, published on 15 December, whether she has any plans to (a) contact insurance companies of or (b) provide assistance in any other way to affected drivers to help obtain a reassessment of their current premiums.
It’s a good question but smart motorway cover-up minister Simon Lightwood made no attempt to answer it:
Data has been provided to the police forces to enable them to start contacting those drivers who were impacted by this anomaly and allow the process of redress to begin. While we expect the number of drivers impacted by this issue to be very small, all those notified by the police will receive details on how to contact National Highways, who will consider the details of each claim on a case-by-case basis.
The Department for Transport (DfT) has admitted that a minister had no basis for his claim that he is suppressing a raft of evaluation reports on smart motorway schemes because an assurance process is “ongoing”.
Roads minister Simon Lightwood made the claim in a letter to widow Claire Mercer, after she wrote to ask for the release of Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) reports that the DfT is preventing National Highways from publishing, including one on the stretch of all lane running smart motorway where her husband was killed in 2019.
Although some of the reports are believed to have been completed in 2022, the DfT has claimed that they are still undergoing an “assurance” process; in fact, National Highways has said that the department needs ministers to agree a “comms handling plan” before they can be released.
The POPE reports are expected to reveal the real-world performance of individual smart motorway schemes, including their safety and environmental records and their economic benefits, or otherwise.
In his letter to Mercer, Lightwood wrote:
National Highways does evaluate the economic impact after schemes have been operational for five years and we are committed to transparency, but this is a complex process, and it is right that we take the time to fully assure findings. This process is ongoing, and we will provide an update on publication in due course.
But I asked the DfT what advice Lightwood was given on which he made the claim that the assurance process was “ongoing”. It admitted:
no specific advice on the assurance process was provided to Ministers
It added:
…at the date of the letter I can confirm that Ministers were considering advice on the findings from the reports. As POPE reports contain a complex set of analysis, it is right that the process of assurance, governance and preparation prior to publication is undertaken thoroughly.
Although this second part references “assurance”, it does so only in a “this is exactly the sort of thing we should be doing” sense, rather than claiming that such a thing is currently happening.
It appears in any case that the process is now at the stage that the DfT describes as “governance and preparation prior to publication”, by which it means, working out how to spin what is obviously bad news.
And the bigger picture is that, despite suggestions that the POPE reports might be published around Christmas, they remain suppressed.
As 2025 ends, I think it might be a good idea to produce a quick run-through of the things Labour hasn’t done on the transport front, and it’s quite a long list.
As I noted last week, promises that the first road safety strategy for a decade would be published by the end of the year have not been met.
There is no sign of a follow-up to the consultation on pavement parking, despite the (Tory) government consultation having closed five years ago.
In November 2024, the then transport secretary, Louise Haigh, set out the government’s vision for the first integrated national transport strategy in over two decades but it has failed to follow that through.
Ministers have given the Lower Thames Crossing planning permission but have yet to nail down how to pay for it and National Highways has a plan, but not the funding to begin to tackle road runoff.
On local roads, £2bn a year has been promised to fill and prevent potholes, but not yet.
Similarly, the legislation to create Great British railways has been introduced, but there is no target date for implementation, other than a statement that “GBR is expected to be operational around 12 months after the bill receives Royal Assent.”
On the other hand, there is some new branding.
Also on the trains, a programme to roll-out contactless payments in South East England beyond London is still some way behind where it should be and a target date to start services on the first bit of East West rail has been missed.
Finally, if we take at face value that ministers really, really want to publish those smart motorway POPE reports that the Department for Transport has been suppressing, as soon as they have a “comms handling plan”, they have failed to deliver that.
Alternatively, they are just happy for now to have swept the bad news under the carpet.
Many people working in this week or so between Christmas and New Year are having to wait longer for trains, not because of engineering works, but because the service has been intentionally made worse, despite Labour’s claim to be putting passengers first.
For example, trains to and from London from where I live in Epsom have been cut from one every fifteen minutes in the rush hour to one every half hour – and that goes for both Southern trains to and from Victoria and SWR trains to and from Waterloo.
As far as I can tell, in at least the case of Southern, there is no impact from engineering works; the company is just choosing to save money by running fewer trains, based on assumptions that fewer people will be travelling.
Those people are not paying any less to have a worse service and the peak time charges have not been waived.
And the trains are still overcrowded.
Another problem is that if you cut the frequency of the trains and then cancel one, as Southern did yesterday, a fifteen-minute wait can become an hour.
This says a lot about the state of our railways today, with cost-cutting instead of an attempt to run the best service possible. A total lack of imagination about the benefits of giving customers a service where they feel valued.
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