Established in 2011 with £6m of government cash, the Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme (HMEP) marked the beginning of a new era – one that aimed to combat austerity and inconsistent performance in local highways through sector-led improvement, sharing of best practice, whole-life asset management, proactive and programmed maintenance and more standardised procurement.
It set about releasing a range of documents and carrying out peer reviews, and eventually became a foundation to the Incentive Fund and its self-assessment process financial bandings. The programme had the ambition of realising 15% savings across the highways sector by 2015 and 30% or more by 2020.
In 2015 the HMEP Board commissioned a survey of local authorities to investigate the take up of HMEP and its benefits. Around 62% of authorities responded to the online survey and a number of deep dive interviews were conducted.
The survey identified an estimated £6.5m of savings over a three-year period, along with data to suggest that further significant savings were expected over subsequent years, Highways understands.
Highways Term Maintenance Association (HTMA), which represents contractors and was involved with HMEP from the beginning, told Highways that a report was written by Atkins for the HMEP board on the back of the survey and the deep dive analysis.
This report apparently found 91% of respondents said HMEP products were a worthwhile investment of time and resource and another source close to HMEP claims that Atkins ‘came to the view that HMEP had achieved 15% savings in the sector on highways spend nationally’.
The end of the beginning
HMEP has had its detractors of course. Some saw it has an opportunity wasted and suggested it was a kind of lowest common denominator improvement scheme. One senior source from a unitary authority called it a ‘blunt template that needed to be adapted’. However, even they accepted that it had helped ‘galvanise the industry’.
By 2015/16, HMEP required a top up of £500,000 and received another boost in 2016/17 with a further £550,000. By the end of 2016 the Department for Transport (DfT) was ready to let HMEP fly the nest, so to speak, rather than topping it up with cash every year.
According to some sources, the DfT had put in over £10m by this point, although this claim has not been confirmed.
Ministers announced that the DfT would not be providing any more cash but would break the programme up into constituent parts, which were expected to find sustainable financial models.
The National Highways and Transport Network – a subscriber-based, service improvement organisation best known for the NHT Public Satisfaction Survey – was to take responsibility for HMEP’s Connect and Share resource.
The Local Government Association (LGA) took control of the peer reviews it developed with HMEP, while the asset management and procurement products HMEP had made freely available were passed to Local Partnerships – a joint venture between HM Treasury and the LGA.
Engagement and communications for the programme was to be handled by the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT).
One year on, where are we?
Putting it diplomatically, HMEP appears to have slowed down somewhat. Putting it more bluntly, some in the sector are now publicly referring to it in the past tense.
The problem, as ever, is money and finding a way to keep the programme self-sustaining, with a subscriptions-based system apparently having been ruled out.
Local Partnerships has not progressed the agenda, with one source even complaining that an updated standard procurement contract tool had been with the DfT since July, but has not even been released.
Kevin Jones, strategic director infrastructure at Local Partnerships, said: ‘It’s a difficult time for local government. I can understand the difficulties that local authorities will have to find more revenues to put into an initiative like HMEP.
‘HMEP has been very beneficial so it would be a loss to the sector. We are desperately trying to find a solution. We need to find a solution and find the resources to drive it forward.’
The CIHT asserts that the business case for its communications service is still with the DfT for sign off. This may have reached something of an impasse, as the DfT is not keen to put any money in and the CIHT appears to be asking for payment. At the time of writing, the last news item on the HMEP website dates back to February 2017.
The peer review process is not over but has run somewhat dry. It had been half subsidised by HMEP and half paid for by the client council with the total cost of around £10,000, which was thought to have provided significant value for money for councils, allowing the authorities to avoid more expensive consultancy fees.
An LGA spokesperson told Highways: ‘The feedback from councils carrying out peer reviews of their highways departments has been consistently positive. We have carried out 30 reviews since 2012, with the last review completed in June, and are continuing the programme with another review scheduled for later this year [2018].
‘Since the Department for Transport withdrew funding, we have asked councils to cover the cost of the reviews themselves. We remain in discussions with the Government about future funding, as we know that peer reviews can play a crucial role in determining that local roads are the best they can possibly be.’
However, 20 of these reviews had been completed by early 2016 and Jason Russell, deputy director, environment and infrastructure at Surrey County Council, who was in charge of the HMEP review process, said it had the capability to carry out roughly 10-15 peer reviews a year. Having only two reviews on the books for the last six months does not bode well. As the costs are now charged solely to local authorities the reason for this drop might be the obvious one.
A source close to the process told Highways: ‘The organisations that have taken HMEP on have not come up with a viable way forward. We need to take the improvements HMEP brought about forward and not take our foot off the pedal, which appears to be what has happened.’
Former HMEP advocate and past president of council directors’ body ADEPT, Steve Kent, said: ‘I find it very disappointing and I know a lot of people who are also disappointed that the momentum gained and improvements of HMEP appear to have ground to a halt when they are most needed. The question is being asked: “What has happened to HMEP?”
‘There is a real danger that we fall back to each authority doing their own thing, which is precisely what HMEP was set up to avoid.’
Director of local transport at the DfT, Graham Pendlebury, told Highways: ‘We didn’t feel that the Government could just keep on funding year-on-year something that was meant to be self-evidently the right thing for authorities to do.
‘Nevertheless, it is clearly the intention that the HMEP principles – which are also embedded in all these other documents like the code of practice and the Incentive Fund – we would expect authorities to keep following.
‘There are lots of mechanisms whereby we think HMEP will continue. Of course it does still continue in name and I do sometimes hear feedback about things slightly running into the sand and often it’s directed at local highways authorities perhaps playing lip service but not truly following through.’
Ironically, the Connect and Share resource, which made little headway during the time of DfT funding, is now the only aspect that seems to have improved after the break-up.
Is there any way forward?
HTMA suggests it should be possible to develop a business case for continued DfT funding for HMEP through top-slicing a small amount from the local roads maintenance budget. Going even further than this, HTMA has also suggested putting its hands in its own pockets, such is the level of support for the programme.
Geoff Allister, former executive director at HTMA told Highways: ‘We have already said we are prepared to commit some funding, but we would have to see some sort of a business plan, which we haven’t got at the moment.
‘I think it is fair to say that HTMA members are totally committed to the concept of HMEP. We do accept that there are other ways of delivering what is required but we are very committed to HMEP and put a lot of time and effort into it. We want to see it continue in some shape or other.
‘We are as frustrated as everyone else that the products and asset management element of it is regressing. From our point of view, there is financial evidence that HMEP has produced and the savings have been quantified and audited. On that basis I think there is a case for the department to possibly provide some seed funding, or whatever it may be, to try and kick start this in some sort of form.’
He added that HTMA has called for a lessons learned exercise from the peer reviews and that the LGA has agreed that is something they would like to deliver.
The good news
Highways spoke to Simon Pinkney, commercial director for the private company Measure 2 Improve, which is running the Connect and Share element of HMEP for the NHT at a cost to itself in order to support the sector and develop its own network.
‘The idea is to put organisations together across the sector and share best practice. Our proposal was to use the existing networks throughout England, both national and regional, to get them to create a virtual resource of best practice material. We have asked them to make a commitment and sign a pledge to support Connect and Share with materials, best practice, learnings and to provide a representative for a steering group.’
Among the organisations that have signed up are Transport for Greater Manchester, the West Midlands Highways Alliance and the Midlands Service Improvement Group.
A verbal agreement has come from the South West Highway Alliance, the North East Highways Alliance, the Midlands Highway Alliance and the Direct Management Group (representing direct labour organisations). Discussions are ongoing with HTMA, Highways understands.
Mr Pinkney added: ‘We have also set up a temporary website – www.hmepconnectandshare.org. The intention is that the material will all go on the HMEP site but some work needs to be done before we can upload. Until then we are using the temporary website.
‘We are going to engage organisations to put practice material on there. It’s a shop window for them. I think it would be useful if we concentrated on creating areas so people know where to look for certain things such as asset management, but that’s for the steering group to decide. We have had a positive reaction from everybody and there is a willingness to make this work – so let’s hope we can.’
Measure 2 Improve is waiting for final confirmation from all parties before arranging for the first steering group meeting.
Mr Pinkney added that the network has spoken to HMEP’s steering group about doing a survey on which councils are using which HMEP products. It was agreed this is something that would be useful.
The HMEP steering group apparently still meets every quarter and is well-attended. There is also talk from senior sources in the DfT that HMEP could be revamped or in some way reinvented this year.
All in all, it seems the rumours of HMEP’s death are somewhat exaggerated – it’s still on life support.
