Strategic Business Plan is “important milestone for England’s motorways and major A roads,” says Highways Agency chief executive Graham Dalton.

Highways England, the Government-owned company which will replace the Highways Agency from next April, this week set out its first ever five year plan to modernise, maintain and operate England’s 6900km network of motorways and major A roads.

The £15bn plan responds to the Department for Transport’s Road Investment Strategy published last week, and puts at its core improved customer service, better planning and stronger relationships across the supply chain.

“It is fair to say that investment [in the strategic network] has been below what has been needed for several decades. This is a clear stepping up." Graham Dalton, Highways Agency chief executive

“It is fair to say that investment [in the strategic network] has been below what has been needed for several decades. This is a clear stepping up,” he said pointing out that the new organisation would have to triple its spend rate. 

 “The business plan puts detail around delivering the strategy and confirms how the money will be spent. And it is this financial commitment that is so very important,” he added.

The need to put in place both the Road Investment Strategy and the new Highways England Business Plan now ahead of next April’s start of the new business has necessitated closer working between the DfT and the Highway Agency than would perhaps be in future iterations of the plan.

However, Dalton was clear that the plan provided substantial challenges to both the new Highways England business and to the supply chain as they worked together to better plan roadworks, clear up incidents more quickly, increase access to local routes for cyclists and pedestrians and improve the environment alongside roads  

“We’ve worked closely with the Department on the development of the first Road Investment Strategy. Our route strategies have been key in understanding where improvements to the network can make a difference to drivers and enable economic growth,” said Dalton.

“We will feed into the development of the strategy for the second five year period and we expect there will be a longer gap between our contribution to the strategy, the strategy itself and the resulting strategic business plan.”

Funding explained

£24bn – the amount invested in England’s strategic roads in this parliament and the next (2010-2020/21)

£15bn – the amount invested in England’s strategic roads between now and 2021
£11bn – the amount Highways England will invest in modernising strategic roads in the next roads period (2015-2020), including 400 more miles of smart motorway

The plan will be followed by a detailed Delivery Plan, due for publication before Highways England starts operating in April 2015, which will set out how the Strategic Business Plan will be delivered.

Dalton said that key to delivering this Strategic Business Plan was building the confidence in the supply chain that the programme of work was there to plan for.

To this end, legislation to commit the Infrastructure Bill to law and so confirm creation of the new Highways England business was, he said, still expected to be passed into law by the end of this parliamentary session.

Crucially this legislation would give Highways England similar status as Network Rail and so for the first time ringfence the highways budget, requiring any ministerial change of heart to be debated and agreed first by MPs.

“The Strategic Business Plan sets out how we will meet the Road investment Strategy and how we go about delivering a better service to customers,” he said.  

The plan sets out Highways England’s three core activities as modernising, maintaining and operating the strategic road network and highlights five ways that it will deliver these goals as:

• Planning for the future
• Growing our capability
• Building stronger relationships
• Efficient and effective delivery
• Improving customer service

The goal is meet the government’s aspiration to establish a network built around a nationwide “spine” of smart motorway from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, supplemented by a new network of Expressways – a new class of high quality, dual lane, highway linking strategically important locations.

The Road Investment Strategy and Strategic Business Plan are about preparing for the future, he said, pointing out that it was now critical that Highways England worked closely with local communities and stakeholders to minimise the impact of roads and roadworks as they passed by and through communities.

“Those firms that qualified are the ones who understood what we are trying to achieve. Those who have not qualified were the firms who simply saw this as a tendering opportunity.” Graham Dalton.

“Our Strategic Business Plan makes it clear that in order to deliver investment of this scale we need to work smarter, build strong relationships and provide a really good service for our customers,” said Dalton.

“The plan is ambitious and sets out a vision where safety means no-one should be harmed on our network; where minimal disruption means planning roadworks better over the next five years; and modernisation means more ‘smart’ motorways and a new standard of A road turning them into ‘expressways’,” he added.

Dalton said that whether it was around reducing noise levels or work to minimise delays, the new business now had, through its recently announced Collaborative Delivery Framework partners, 26 competent and innovative businesses to work with. 

“The challenge is to manage the impact of our supply chain on the customer,” he said. “Roadworks are not a good part of the Highways England brand. We have to push up productivity without necessarily taking any more road space.”

Highways England sets out an ambition to find £1.2bn of efficiencies through “innovation, smarter working and better planning” adding that “closer working with partners and stakeholders will enable better delivery and future planning for the next roads investment period”.

“We have a number of new entrants [to our delivery framework],” Dalton explained, pointing out that it was keen to remove as may traditional barriers to entry.

“Those firms that qualified are the ones who understood what we are trying to achieve,” he added. “Those who have not qualified were the firms who simply saw this as a tendering opportunity.”

However, he added that he expected that there would still be opportunities for smaller firms to win work in future as subcontractors to the framework contractors.

A key feature of the government’s Road Investment Strategy is its desire to reduce the impact that roads have on local communities through both operational and construction noise and Highways England has a major tranche of work planned over the next five years to deliver this goal.

Dalton explained that based on studies and consultation work already carried by government, some 1150 locations have already been identified for noise mitigation and further consultations with communities would follow.

“We were asked ‘what might you do to limit the exposure?’ Now we are able to put the funding behind implementing the required noise mitigation.”

In addition he said money was now available to accelerate resurfacing with low noise materials even where the carriageway was not life expired and to extend low-noise resurfacing across all lanes of a highway in cases where typically previously there might only be a case for resurfacing one lane.

“We have been consulting with local communities and businesses to see where the priorities are and we will continue to consult.”

Funding explained

• £24bn – the amount invested in England’s strategic roads in this parliament and the next (2010-2020/21)
• £15bn – the amount invested in England’s strategic roads between now and 2021
• £11bn – the amount Highways England will invest in modernising strategic roads in the next roads period (2015-2020), including 400 more miles of smart motorway

Highways England’s specific commitments include:

• Building 650km of extra capacity by creating a spine of smart motorways that relieve congestion and reduce delays without the need for widening
• A safety programme that builds towards the vision of no-one harmed on the strategic road network
• The introduction of a new standard for A roads known as ‘expressways’ with modernised junctions, refuge areas and advanced technology to keep traffic moving
• Substantial resurfacing of the network and reducing noise at 1,150 locations
• Producing a National Cycling Strategy by the end of 2015
• Reducing the impact of incidents by clearing 85% of motorway incidents within one hour by working closely with the emergency services and partners
• Creating a new company with the right capabilities and effective working with suppliers.