New regulator keeps Highways England on the right road

If the people responsible for the UK’s roads lose their way it is responsibility of ORR to steer them back on course

Are you happy with the state of the roads? Ever had drivers caught in a traffic jam? Complaints about the road infrastructure are perpetual but things could be about to change.

Highways England, formed from the ashes of the Highways Agency in late 2014, is the new government body tasked with improving the condition of the strategic road network (SRN) as part of a £15 billion investment plan. These 4,400 miles of motorways and main A-roads account for just 2% of the road length in England, but carry one-third of its traffic, including two-thirds of truck journeys.

Traffic on the SRN grew by 19% between 2000 and 2015 with the biggest growth from vans. The Department for Transport (DfT) predicts that, by 2040, traffic will increase again, by between 29% and 60%. An effective Highways England is vital to ensure the national infrastructure doesn’t collapse.

On paper, one agency has been replaced by another – so what’s new, you might ask. Well, the biggest difference is the fact that Highways England’s policies and performance are now being held to account by the powerful Office of Rail Regulator, since renamed as the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) to recognise its broader remit.

In rail, the ORR is respected and feared in equal measure. It has almost limitless powers, which extend to the closure of lines or stations and forcing a company to stop operations should it be unsatisfied about safety and standards.

It doesn’t have quite the same carte blanche for roads – irrespective of the performance of Highways England, no one is going to thank ORR for closing a major road – with a lot of responsibility for safety sitting with the Health and Safety Executive.

Ultimate sanctions include fines of up to £2.5 million. This is, though, a “last resort”, according to ORR highways director Peter Antolik.

“Enforcement is a spectrum,” he says. “Intervention is a form of enforcement; the first step is to write to them. At the other end are fines. In between we can request information from Highways England and they are under legal obligation to provide it. We can also demand that they implement specific remedies or improvements.”

He provides an example: if Highways England isn’t on track to hit a KPI (key performance indicator), ORR can insist that it obtains external advice and then creates a plan which will require ORR approval.

“We are transparent and a lot of that plays out in the public domain,” Antolik says. “We publish details and stakeholders – for example, freight companies, representative bodies, engineering companies, DfT, Brake, Clean Highways – can give us their views.”

Antolik was appointed in March 2015 after a career that crisscrossed roles in infrastructure investment and utilities regulation. He understands what it’s like to be on the end of “helpful” regulation (“you can put that word in inverted commas,” he quips).

“We have all the powers and duties of a regulator,” he says. “But when we say something has to be done, we have to be mindful what that means regarding workloads and responses from the industry.”

He’s a firm believer of working with industry to solve industry problems, although there is undoubtedly an element of need: the rail division employs 300 people; Antolik has 15. “We are unlikely to have the same depth of expertise, so we engage with sector stakeholders,” he says.

Those consultations, with the likes of DfT, RAC, RoSPA, Transport Focus and the Chartered Institution for Highways and Transportation, helped ORR to shape its own policies. Discussions ranged from the ORR’s objectives and implementation of policy to its enforcement role and level of fines.

Not surprisingly for a regulator with its roots in rail, safety is a priority for ORR, for both users and maintenance workers. It is, therefore, also a priority for Highways England.

“It’s in our DNA. We have relentless focus ,” says Antolik. “And while we don’t have the same powers as rail, we have that as our backdrop.”

The major change of focus initiated by creating Highways England can be summed up in one word: planning. Highways Agency was driven by short-term policy-making which resulted in an inefficient delivery of results and a failure to achieve targets.

“That’s undoubtedly true,” agrees Antolik. “There’s freedom for Highways England to do long-term planning with a five-year settlement. Within that we have created a monitor function to ensure they are achieving efficiency over that time.”

He has relied heavily on the knowledge and experiences from the rail division: the tools, technology and thinking it already employed have been tweaked for roads, such as the annual data submissions or the monitoring framework which follows a similar philosophy of being proportionate and targeted.

Combining road and rail also enables the body to spot linkages between the two and where investment strategies do not stack up. It’s the ORR’s strategic intent to play a role in the development of both sectors.

Take freight, for example. When ORR assesses price control and charges for operators, it can sense-check a strategy of moving freight from road to rail or vice versa.

ORR published its first annual report into Highways England in July which gave the organisation a positive evaluation (see panel).

Antolik sums up by saying Highways England has “done pretty well for the first year; they have largely met their targets and hit their KPIs”.

He adds: “We recognise that Highways England has just been created so they have gaps in capability in a number of areas, both today – e.g. stakeholder engagement and communications – and for the future – e.g. project management for all their projects over five years.”

That will get increasingly challenging towards the end of the period as some 50-60 road schemes are due to start.

“Is that deliverable?” Antolik asks, rhetorically. He points to a number of concerns, such as employing the people, achieving planning consents and structuring the workloads – those concerns have been discussed with Highways England, which is now working on a plan of action.

“It’s a perfect example of the benefits and challenges of road reform,” Antolik says. “If they can plan efficiently, they should be able to deliver it more efficiently and help the supply chain to plan better to reduce cost. Understanding how will impact their KPIs, such as safety and keeping the network open, for the benefit of all users.”

Highways England’s objectives for its first five-year period were laid out in the investment strategy set by DfT. Next time they will be agreed with ORR.

Strategic studies are already underway, such as the Oxford-Cambridge link road and south-west M25, which will identify whether a highway is the best option or whether an alternative, such as rail, offers a better solution.

Highways England objectives

* Making the network safer:

40% reduction in killed and serious injured (KSI) by the end of 2020 against the 2005-09 average. Current performance: KSI down 3.5% in 2015, but is above the trajectory to meet the 2020 target.

* Improving user satisfaction: target 90% by March 2017. Current score: 89.3%.

* Encouraging economic growth: reduce average delays (no target set). Current: 8.9 seconds – worsening trend.

* Achieve real efficiency:  Save at least £1.2bn on capital expenditure by 2019/20. Current: £33m of efficiencies identified and under review.

* Network condition:  95% of pavement requiring no investigation for maintenance. Current: 95.4%