Highways Agency

National Highways, formerly the Highways Agency and later Highways England, is a government-owned company charged with operating, maintaining and improving motorways and major A roads in England. It also sets highways standards used by all four UK administrations, through the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges. Within England, it operates information services through the provision of on-road signage and its Traffic England website, provides traffic officers to deal with incidents on its network, and manages the delivery of improvement schemes to the network.

Founded as an executive agency, it was converted into a government-owned company, Highways England, on 1 April 2015. As part of this transition, the UK government set out its vision for the future of the English strategic road network in its Road Investment Strategy. A second Road Investment Strategy was published in March 2020, with the company set to invest £27 billion between 2020 and 2025 to improve the network as described in the strategy. It was renamed to its current name on 19 August 2021.

History

The Highways Agency was created as an executive agency of the Department for Transport on 30 March 1994.

As part of the Department for Transport's 2010 Spending Review settlement, Alan Cook was appointed to lead an independent review of the government's approach to the strategic road network. It recognised that the Highways Agency was closer to central government than other infrastructure operators, resulting in a lack of a strategic vision and certainty of funding due to the wider policy environment in which it operated, as well as the limited pressure to drive efficiencies compared to that faced by regulated sectors. After an announcement on 27 June 2013 by Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, it became a government-owned company with the name Highways England on 1 April 2015.

Jim O'Sullivan became Chief Executive on 1 July 2015, replacing Graham Dalton.

In 2020, they launched an advertising campaign using the song " Go West" by The Village People and covered by The Pet Shop Boys. They changed the lyrics to Go Left, encouraging people to stop on the left hand side of the motorway.

On 19 August 2021, it was announced that Highways England would be rebranding to National Highways, a move coinciding with the permanent appointment of Nick Harris as CEO, after taking over as interim CEO from Jim O’Sullivan in February 2021. It was suggested that the 'national' in the new name refers to the fact that the company is responsible for setting highways standards for the whole of the UK, through the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges, even though decisions on the building and maintenance of roads outside of England are devolved to the governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The renaming has met with some criticism, being the third name for the agency in six years, and with reports that 'Highways Agency' is colloquially used more than either newer name. The name has also attracted criticism from the other countries of the UK, particularly in Wales where the use of 'national' has been criticised despite transport being devolved to Wales.

Responsibilities

National Highways is responsible for operating, maintaining and improving the strategic road network (SRN). The SRN (the motorways and major A roads in England) comprises over 4,000 miles of road and includes various structures such as bridges, tunnels, drainage systems and technology assets including variable message signs and cabling. The SRN includes only around 2% of the total road length in England, but it carries around a third of all its motor vehicle traffic.

National Highways is responsible for the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (DMRB) providing the standards, advice notes and other documents relating to the design, assessment and operation of trunk roads, including motorways in the United Kingdom. The manual is produced by National Highways in conjunction with the devolved governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The manual is also used in some parts of the Commonwealth. The authority also produces the Manual of Contract Documents for Highway Works (MCHW), and Asset Maintenance and Operation Requirements (AMOR) which supersedes the Network Maintenance Manual and Routine and Winter Service Codes, and its predecessor the Trunk Road Maintenance Manual.

Operating the network

National Highways' operations are split into areas which are loosely based on the regions of England. These regions are subdivided into nine operational areas as well as eleven areas and routes which are managed by DBFO (Design-Build-Finance-Operate) companies. Each area is managed and maintained by an area team (the Managing Agent; MA) and a contractor (the Managing Agent Contractor; MAC). The M6 Toll is a PFI concession which is also part of the strategic road network.

Network management map

Improving the network

In common with the regulated sectors, National Highways works to fixed funding periods called Road Periods. Each Road Period is currently five years in length, and a particular Road Investment Strategy (RIS) will broadly align with this. Before a new Road Period starts, National Highways will provide the Secretary of State for Transport with an SRN Initial Report, including an assessment of the state of the SRN, maintenance and enhancement priorities, and future development needs. Following this, the government produces a draft RIS setting out the high-level outputs that National Highways will need to deliver within the corresponding Road Period, alongside the proposed funding. National Highways will then respond with a Strategic Business Plan detailing its plans for delivering the RIS. This is reviewed by the Highways Monitor to assess whether the proposed requirements are deliverable with the proposed financial resources and sufficiently challenging. After the Strategic Business Plan and RIS are finalised, National Highways must deliver the agreed outputs and will be monitored on its progress by the Highways Monitor.

Development of the SRN is achieved through National Highways' capital investment programme, currently funded entirely by government through grant-in-aid and set out in the first Road Investment Strategy. For Road Period 1 (2015–20), Highways England invested around £15 billion in its network, with additional funding to address other local challenges in proximity of the SRN relating to the environment; air quality; cycling, safety and integration; and growth and housing.

For Road Period 2 (2020-25), National Highways will invest over £27 billion in its network, of which £14 billion is for road enhancements. The rest is for operating, maintaining and renewing its roads, and further funding to address challenges on the environment and wellbeing; users and communities; innovation and modernisation; and safety and congestion. As of this Road Period, National Highways' activities will, at least in part, be funded by vehicle excise duty.

Organisation

Head office

The company head office is in Bridge House, on a one-way gyratory in Guildford, Surrey. Previously its head office was in Dorking, Surrey. In 2014 the agency signed a ten-year lease with the owner of the Guildford facility.

National Traffic Information Service (NTIS)

Sopra Steria operates the National Traffic Information Service (NTIS) on behalf of Highways England. NTIS is the information hub of England's strategic road network.

The service is based at Quinton, Birmingham and is responsible for providing accurate, historical, real-time and predictive traffic and incident information to businesses, the travelling public and National Highways' operations. It collects real-time traffic information from over 10,000 fixed sites on the motorway and all-purpose trunk road network from MIDAS and Traffic Monitoring Unit (TMU) electronic loops in the road surface and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras at the roadside. Additionally it uses anonymous floating vehicle traffic data (FVD) from vehicles to supplement the fixed traffic monitoring sites. NTIS also has access to nearly 2,000 CCTV cameras, 300 weather stations, 4,600 roadside electronic signs, 16,000 roadside electronic matrix signals and incident data from over 250 operational partners including the police and local authorities.

It processes this data to create useful intelligence for operational decision making and dissemination of current and predictive information to the public using the 4,600 roadside variable-message signs, the Highways England website (including a mobile version), social media channels such as Twitter and the telephone-based Highways England customer contact centre as well as distributing information to the media and businesses through a number of data feeds. These feeds are widely used by organisations such as the BBC
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