Tag: biodiversity

• “Shocking” Harris wilts under pressure

  It’s fair to say that National Highways chief executive Nick Harris got a bit of a kicking from MPs yesterday – on the subject of failed tree planting – but he was allowed to give a very vague answer on the subject of funding for cleaning up water pollution.

  To recap, Harris and the company’s director of environmental sustainability, Stephen Elderkin, were in front of the Environmental Audit Committee to talk about biodiversity, including tree planting, as well as what the company is doing to mitigate the toxic runoff from its roads.

  The headline on water pollution is that Harris said the company had mitigated just 40 “high risk” outlets since he last appeared before the committee in 2021 but now estimated that there are another 250 approximately, which it has pledged to mitigate by 2030.

  That is the date – the original end date for the third Road Investment Strategy (RIS 3) in March 2030 – given in National Highways’ 2030 Water Quality Plan, subject to funding of course.

  

  Harris described this as a prioritisation process of getting stuck into the very worst locations, adding that the company has 180 locations where it is developing designs, with more high risk locations expected to be identified.

  The problem is that National Highways has no funding for this at the moment. It has a promise of nearly £25bn up to 2031 under the draft RIS but no specific funding streams. Ministers have promised a new focus on repairs and renewals, alongside a long and growing tail of enhancement schemes but there are as yet no designated funds for the environment, for example.

  Labour MP Olivia Blake raised the issue of funding and asked Harris what certainty he had that the company would be able to meet the target on mitigation. He replied with wishful thinking:

  We’re proceeding on the basis that we will be funded to do all 250. The interim year hasn’t affected our design work. We’re moving forward on the assumption that it’s all going to be funded.

  He went on to explain the convoluted process by which National Highways, the Office of Rail and Road and the Department for Transport work towards a final RIS 3 by 2030.

  (more…)

  2025.09.04

• Unpicking National Highways’ environmental record

  The Office of Rail and Road’s (ORR) Annual Assessment of National Highways’ performance: end of the second road period April 2020 to March 2025 has details of the company’s performance against KPIs on environmental issues and it’s a bio-diverse picture to say the least.

  Cutting corporate carbon emissions is one KPI where the company has failed and failed badly; it’s also a measure where I have been tracking the moving of the goalposts for sometime, and have indeed contributed to the moving of the goalposts.

  In 2023 I reported that the company was claiming to have a mechanism for reporting against its target of a 75% cut against a 2017-18 baseline that amounted to a one-way bet. The expected cut was mainly because the expected decarbonisation of electricity from the grid.

  National Highways claimed to have reached a backroom deal with the government whereby its emissions were based on forecasts of the carbon intensity of electricity, even if they had been proved wrong.

  This was news to the government and a few months later it announced that the calculation methodology would remain based on actual emissions, but the target would be reduced to a 67% cut. It said this wouldn’t make the easier to achieve, which was an interesting spin to say the least.

  The latest ORR report notes that last year the government reduced the target again – to 56%. But…

  At the end of RP2, National Highways achieved a 51% reduction in its corporate carbon emissions compared to the baseline. Therefore, the company did not meet this KPI target of a 56% reduction for the road period.

  And the ORR notes that it challenged National Highways to speed up its move to LED lighting but it refused. So it ended up with a 51% cut against an original target of 75%.

  (more…)

  2025.07.18