National Highways ‘did not take full advantage' of the opportunities to get ready for RIS 3 last year, despite meeting most interim targets, meaning there is 'an increased risk' to the delivery of the now £26bn-plus programme, according to the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).

The strategic roads monitor said in an assessment of National Highways' performance for 2025-2026 that it met nine out of 11 of its KPIs, all four of its enhancement commitments, all but one of its interim-period capital commitments, and either met or overdelivered on seven of its renewals output commitments.

As expected, the ORR noted that the RIS 2 (2020-2025) safety target of a 50% reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured on the SRN will ‘almost certainly be missed'. This has been known for some time, but as the Department for Transport (DfT) is not due to publish 2025 road casualty statistics until later this year, it is not possible to confirm yet.

National Highways also narrowly missed its carbon reduction target by 2%. 

ORR also revealed another key area in which the strategic roads operator fell short: preparing for the third road investment strategy (RIS 3, 2026-2031).

Missed opportunities? 

As a result of not being able to progress some of its programmes in the interim period (2025-2026) as National Highways 'originally planned', ORR has said that efficient delivery of the third road investment strategy (RIS3) will be ‘more challenging from the outset'.

National Highways sought funding to develop a programme of 12 large renewals schemes for delivery in RIS 3, but its end-of-year data indicated that completion of at least eight schemes has been delayed. This was despite assurances ‘throughout the year' from National Highways that the programme remained 'on track to deliver to the original timelines', the ORR said.

While forecast spend alone is not solely an indicator of progress, ORR found that roughly 67% of the programme's funding was used, with only 33% of the plan delivered on time.

Similarly, it planned to develop 15 concrete road schemes into the design stage ahead of RIS 3, but only managed to develop one, with an underspend of 41%. This suggests that 60% of the funding for the entire programme was spent on delivering only 6.6% of the plans.

National Highways was only able to ‘partially explain' how it reallocated underspends in its large renewals programme and that it also ‘does not have records to show how it made decisions to reallocate funding, including how efficiency and effects on road users were fully considered'.

RIS 3 requires National Highways to deliver a larger and more complex renewals programme than in RIS 2, with total renewals funding increasing by more than 70%, from around £4.9bn to around £8.4bn.

The report states that National Highways ‘recognises that improvements are needed' and expects to implement a programme this summer to make those improvements to how it demonstrates ‘delivery and efficiency of its renewals programme'.

ORR added that it also needs to strengthen its internal governance and controls to demonstrate it has ‘effective internal arrangements in place to respond to changes in the network need, schedule and cost'.

‘This includes,' the report states, ‘being able to clearly evidence the basis of its decision making and demonstrate the effect on users and if it was efficient to do so.'

It adds that making these improvements ‘at pace' is ‘imperative' and that if they are not made, it ‘will consider what further steps are necessary'.

When approached for comment by Highways, a National Highways spokesperson said: ‘We recognise there are areas where we need to do better and welcome ORR's oversight as we strengthen our planning and delivery capability ahead of RIS3.

'On concrete roads, almost all of what we spent in the interim year went on delivering real improvements. Of £42m in final costs, £41.5m was the M27 scheme, which delivered close to 24 lane-kilometres of concrete reconstruction in the interim year and completed construction on 22 June, itself a RIS3 commitment.

'The design work delayed from the interim year is now being picked up in RIS 3, which is already under way and funded at £775m to deliver a programme of reconstruction, life-extension and targeted-intervention schemes.'

Interim performance

The KPIs set by ORR for the interim period were:

  • The number of people killed or seriously injured on the SRN - At least a 50% reduction by the end of 2025 compared to the 2005 to 2009 baseline
  • Average delay - No worse than that of the final year of RP2 (11.8 seconds per vehicle per mile)
  • Network availability - Lane availability of 97.5% or higher
  • Incident clearance rate - At least 86% of motorway incidents cleared within an hour
  • Road pavement condition - At least 96.2% of the network in good condition
  • Biodiversity - Validate and assure 2,700 biodiversity units, for schemes delivered in roads period 2 (RP2)
  • Corporate carbon - A 75% reduction in emissions against the 2019/20 baseline
  • Noise - Produce a noise mitigation plan ready for implementation in RP3
  • Road user satisfaction - Road user satisfaction at least 1 percentage point above the final year of RP2 (69.6%)
  • Roadworks information, timeliness and accuracy - At least 75% of overnight road closures accurately shared 7 days in advance
  • Efficiency - Demonstrate efficient delivery throughout the interim period

Of these 11 KPIs, the two that it failed to meet were safety and corporate carbon emissions.

National Highways did manage to achieve a 73% reduction in its carbon emissions against the 75% target. While this is 2% short of its target (equivalent to 3,714t of carbon emissions), ORR also noted that the gap was due to motorway service areas not holding renewable electricity certificates and higher-than-forecast carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from plug-in hybrid vehicles leased by the company. 

National Highways had eight renewals output commitments:

  • Asphalt road surface
  • Concrete road surface
  • Safety barriers
  • Flooding hotspots
  • Structures
  • Technology – CCTV
  • Technology – signs
  • Technology – signals

While it met seven of these, it failed to meet its commitments for signs technology. ORR also noted that it delivered ‘to the lower end of the performance range' for signals and CCTV technologies.

National Highways attributed these shortcomings to the ‘complexity of integrating new systems with legacy infrastructure and supply chain constraints', which was the same justification it gave for the modernisation and refresh programme being delayed by a year.

ORR highlighted that National Highways repeatedly under-delivering due to the same challenges raises questions as to ‘the extent to which lessons have been learned, embedded, and translated into improved performance'.