Highways England's Passport scheme is about a year behind schedule and has been changed to allow other cards to be used, chief executive Jim O'Sullivan has revealed.

Highways England launched its Passport system - which was requested by industry - in November 2017 in the hope that all suppliers would have their staff registered and supplied with the cards within 12 months.

To date, Highways England has only progressed less than halfway towards this target according to Mr O'Sullivan.

The idea was that the smart card would be the exclusive proof of access to Highways England work sites, providing details on qualifications, workers hours, training and suitability to be present for work.

Now, Highways England has said other validated construction industry or rail cards including the Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) card can be used. This is not without issues however as according to Helen Carter, a lead consultant at Action Sustainability, around 20% of CSCS cards are thought to be fraudulent.

It should be noted though that the CSCS is a competency skills card, whereas the Passport is a competency management system – albeit together with its associated common induction.

It is unclear how much the system is being enforced. One source said: ‘It has all gone quiet. I have not heard anything about the cards.'

The costs to workers has been £30 for the card and £30 for the training certificate for the induction course that goes with the card.

Highways England chief executive Jim O'Sullivan said: ‘The passport scheme has not had the take up of what we would have liked. The take up is less than half of what we would have liked it to have been. As we move to the new framework agreements it is something we are going to have to visit again.

'We did change the requirement of the passport scheme. We recognise now some of the other cards. When we first started talking about the passport we said we wanted this exclusively. We have moved to a point now where we are saying provided you have a recognised qualification which can be the Highways England passport. The reason for that was not to impose unnecessary costs on contractors who are rail qualified, or have signed up to other industry schemes.'

As of October 2018, 9,287 people have been issued cards, while 2,220 people have completed the training, 4,260 have been booked on the course and 2,807 are scheduled to do so.

It is estimated that there are up to 20,000 operatives across all Highways England schemes and projects.

The proof of concept trial runs until October 2019 to test the end to end mechanics of how the cards work on the ground.

Once this trial has been validated, Highways England still has the target of everyone having a passport. Highways England also said it has learnt lessons during our first year in administrating, including compliance with the introduction of GDPR and connection to smartphone technology.

Andrew Page-Dove, regional director for operations said: ‘The health and safety passport provides a common site safety approach which ensures all workers are competent and authorised to be on site.

‘We are a year into the two-year proof of concept trial, and with nearly 10,000 workers holding a passport card, we are gaining essential feedback to enable us to take it forward more widely across the supply chain and help further improve safety for all.'

The scheme has also highlighted how little we know about the exact numbers and nature of the workforce, which in turn demonstrates the potential value of the Passport scheme and also the difficulty in seeing it completed.

LANTRA – a leading industry bodies for training and qualifications – is responsible for quality assurance on the induction course training materials and approving training providers. Most training is done in-house by the contractors LANTRA said.

A spokeswoman told Highways that contractors themselves wanted the Passport scheme and approached Highways England. ‘Industry is working on an analysis of the cost efficiencies,' she added.

Delays had come about in part as a result to changes to Highways England's project management personnel and the scheme's steering group – which includes Tier One contractor representatives - the LANTRA spokeswoman suggested, although now the scheme was picking up momentum she added and many more people are due recieve training in the next few months.

However another issue has been identifying all the suppliers.

‘We have not been given a figure to work to. It is a very fluid industry,' she said.

The Passport system has a noble aim, particularly given recent worrying trends in worker exploitation.

At the recent Road Safety Markings Association's annual conference, Ms Carter highlighted the issue of modern slavery. There are currently estimated to be 40.5 million victims of slavery globally, this is higher than 300 years ago when the UK abolished slavery.

The UK is a location of preference for people traffickers. Over recent years we have seen the estimated figure of UK victims of modern slavery increase 10 fold from around 13,000, to 136,000.

The construction industry is one of the sectors most vulnerable to modern slavery infiltration.

Ms Carter said: ‘While I was done on the A14 project a supply chain manager said they were a little worried as they had a lot of men who live in accommodation all week and cleaners who come in. The cleaners are not very well paid they could be trafficked in and they were worried about potential prostitution and exploitation.'

Ms Carter stated: ‘[in our sector] we are bad at paying people, bad at controlling working hours, create conditions that leave people tired and vulnerable, we have bullying' and that while she had not heard stories of slavery on specific highways schemes she believed it to be ‘only a matter of time'.

She told the story of a security guard who had been found living on a construction site for four days over Christmas, eating only bread and filling up his water bottle from the site tap, while the shift roster was recording four different people turning up to work.

These are the heart breaking realities behind the need to create more security and transparency in highways human resources. As one Highways England official said: ‘People are not our most valuable resource. They are our only resource. So we need to look after them.'

Find out more information and the latest on the Passport scheme here.