Transport Insights

The transport stories you won't see in the industry-friendly media

Author

Chris Ames

Tag: road safety

  • How National Highways planned to fail on safety

    Returning to the subject of National Highways’ pledge to carry out 43 “additional” actions during 2024-25 to improve its failing safety record, a raft of recent documents from the company and its regulator suggest that it *might* have spent more money on the issue, but there remains no confirmation on either point.

    To recap, according to the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), National Highways’ enhanced safety plan, which both bodies have continued to hide from the public, was said to have included 43 additional actions for the year: 24 road safety schemes, eight communications campaigns, and 11 ‘working with others’ actions. Only 33 were delivered during the year and almost all of the undelivered actions were road safety schemes.

    Both organisations said these actions, in a plan delivered in March 2024, were “additional” to the company’s 2024-25 delivery plan, which was published a year later and did not list specific actions.

    I calculated that during the first four years of the second (2020-25) roads period, National Highways had spent £105.8m from its Safety and Congestion designated fund, leaving around £34m to be spent of the £140m five-year budget against a projected “investment” of £27m in the delivery plan.

    In its Annual Report and Accounts for the year, the company, claimed to have “invested” £41.3m in around 160 projects improving safety or congestion. When added to the existing spend, this corresponds with the £147m “spend” in the ORR’s “efficiency and finance” report for RIS 2, although the ORR may have included cost of schemes that have not been completed.

    So National Highways *may* have spent more over the year than it claimed *as the year ended* to have intended to spend and appears to have overshot its RIS 2 budget of £140m.

    Its annual report says that with cuts for designated funds, there was “an exercise to prioritise those schemes contributing to corporate and legislative targets and commitments”. This appears to have led to a boost to the Safety and Congestion fund via by a raid on the Users and Communities fund and National Highways *may* have focused the Safety and Congestion fund more on safety and congestion.

    But there is no real evidence that this happened and National Highways has never said how many of its Safety and Congestion fund were safety and how many were congestion.

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  • ORR covers for National Highways’ failure…again

    National Highways delivered just three quarters of the actions in its secret “Enhanced Safety Plan” for the final year of the 2020-25 roads period (RP2) but its regulator has again claimed that the company is “doing everything that it can” to “try and meet” its casualty reduction target, which it is likely to miss badly.

    The Office of Rail and Road’s (ORR) Annual assessment of National Highways’ performance – April 2024 to March 2025 includes a short section on road safety in which it appears to have once again moved the goalposts to spare National Highways’ blushes.

    The ORR’s (third) Annual assessment of safety performance on the strategic road network, published in March stated:

    National Highways’ enhanced safety plan set out 43 actions that the company would take to improve safety in the final year of RP2. These actions are in addition
    to its existing commitments to improve safety that are set out as part of RIS2, and within annual delivery plans.

    It revealed that by the end of January/February it had delivered just 22, comprising five road safety schemes, eight communication campaigns and nine ‘working with others’ actions.

    The new report discloses that:

    At the end of March 2025, the company had delivered 33 actions of the 43 actions that were included in its enhanced safety plan. It plans to deliver eight more by the end of 2025, with one scheme removed from the plan following objections from a local authority. The remaining action is related to the Roads Policing Review and will be taken forward once government publishes its response to the review.

    Despite promising to “hold National Highways to account” for delivery of this plan, the regulator praises its efforts:

    We consider that, in 2025, the company is doing everything that it can in the final year to try and meet the target…

    There is a clear sleight of hand from the regulator in redefining the year that it is talking about, from the final year of RP2 (i.e. 2024-25) to “the final year” of the calendar year 2025, by the end of which serious casualties should be down by a half.

    However, further to my post earlier today, the ORR seems to have dropped the claim that the 43 actions were “additional” to existing plans. I have asked it if it now accepts that it cannot verify this.  

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  • Lax ORR fails hold National Highways to account

    All five road safety schemes that National Highways actually delivered under its “enhanced safety plan” for the last year of the second roads period fell under an existing safety programme, with no evidence that they were “beyond its previously planned activities”, as required by the company’s regulator.

    But the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), which demanded that the company produce the “enhanced plan” to address its poor casualty reduction record, failed to carry out any checks to ensure the actions were genuinely additional.

    In fact, both the company and the regulator have insisted (without evidence) that the actions in the enhanced safety plan, which was given to the ORR in March 2024, were “additional” to National Highways’ 2024-25 Delivery Plan Update, which was not published until this March and does not list specific activities.

    National Highways appears to have actually cut the funding available for safety improvements at the end of the whole 2020-25 roads period, including the year covered by the plan.

    The disclosure casts further doubt on the competence of the ORR and its willingness to hold National Highways to account, as it claims to do, after it refused to publish the plan but praised the company for “doing everything it reasonably can” to address its failing safety record.

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