Some of the measures in a year-old plan that National Highways was required to draw up to address its failing safety record are ‘still going through consultation and governance’, the government-owned company has said.
The measures date back to the Office of Rail and Road’s (ORR) annual report on safety on the strategic road network (SRN) in December 2023, in which it warned that National Highways was likely to miss its key target to reduce serious casualties on the SRN by the end of 2025.
The ORR said it had told National Highways to draw up measures to meet the target ‘and transparently include them in a robust plan by the end of March 2024’.
National Highways supplied the plan to the ORR, but has repeatedly refused to publish it, as has the ORR, which asserted in a report in July that ‘it appears that National Highways is doing everything it can in the final year of [the current roads period] to try to meet the target’.
However, the following month National Highways admitted that it may not implement all the measures in the ‘robust plan’ and in October National Highways chief executive Nick Harris described some measures as a ‘plan for a plan’.
He added that when they are ‘stable and firmed up, which they surely will be… I see no reason why they can’t be shared’.
This month, a spokesperson told Highways: ‘Some measures included are still going through consultation and governance which is why it has not been published.’
The spokesperson declined to provide any explanation for the failure to take the measures forward.
National Highways has recently implemented a number of speed restrictions on its A roads, incluidng on the A46 near Bath. It is not known whether these were part of the unpublished plan.
The ORR previously told Highways that in its annual safety report it would hold National Highways to account against the plan it originally submitted.
It originally said it would publish this in February but has now told Highways that it ‘expects’ to be able to publish the report in March.
