Highways England has made a strong start in its first year but has ground to make up in key areas such as safety, delivery planning and efficiency savings, according to the national roads watchdog.
In the first annual assessment of Highways England’s performance after the Government-owned company was launched last year, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) found it had met its performance specification targets for 2015-16.
'In its first year, Highways England has achieved its performance targets and is on track with its investment plan. However, the majority of delivery targets have been set for later in the five year funding period,' Joanna Whittington, ORR chief executive, said.
She added: 'Highways England has more work to do to demonstrate how it will ensure delivery of its capital investment plan, which ramps up in later years.
'The company needs to be clear about how it will manage some specific risks, such as those associated with the availability of a skilled workforce and capacity of the supply chain to deliver.'
The ORR raised 'particular concerns' that:
- assumptions for major schemes include a very significant increase in schemes starting construction in 2019-20, which may present a risk to delivery.
- there is more work to do to set out how it is monitoring deliverability and managing associated risks.
- the baseline assumes a small proportion of total scheme expenditure during the first roads period on those schemes announced in the RIS and Autumn Statement 2014 - the company needs to confirm that this is aligned with stakeholders’, including the Department for Transport’s, expectations.
Highways England must deliver during the ‘first road period’ from 2015-2020 in eight areas, with 11 key performance indicators (KPIs), eight of which have targets.
In all areas Highways England was rated as either green or amber in performance by ORR, raising no areas of major concern.
There was a particularly good performance in key areas for the travelling public, including the condition of the network and the flow of traffic.
In March 2016, pavement condition was 95.4%, above the target of 95% and this follows an upward trend. Transport Focus - the independent transport user watchdog – found pavement condition to be the top priority of road users.
Network availability was rated at 98.4% - above the target of 97% - with Highways England clearing 86% of motorway incidents within an hour - above its target of 85%.
The National Road Users’ Satisfaction Survey (NRUSS) found 89.3% of users very or fairly satisfied with the network in 2015-16 up from 88.5% in the previous year.
‘This represents the end of a decline in overall road user satisfaction in the preceding four years. However, overall satisfaction is still below the target level of 90% (which is to be achieved from the end of March 2017 onwards),’ the report states.
On the critical issue of safety Highways England, while making improvements, is on course to miss its target of reducing the number of reducing of people killed or seriously injured (KSI) by 40% by the end of 2020 against the 2005–09 average baseline.
The number of KSIs in 2015 was 3.6% lower than in 2014. However on this trajectory, the company will miss its 2020 target – 2015 KSI levels were higher than in 2012, and 15 more people were killed on the network last year than in 2014.
Worryingly, the accident frequency rate for both Highways England and supply chain staff ‘has remained worse than Highways England’s own targets throughout the year,’ the ORR found.
The watchdog found that Highways England was making progress towards improving safety and gave a demonstration ‘of its forecasting tool which it is using to quantify the impact of its planned interventions on reducing the number of KSIs’.
A key focus for road safety expenditure will be on improving safety of those parts of the network with the worst safety record – primarily single carriageway A roads, the ORR said. However the main body of delivery on the safety agenda is not expected until 2017-18 and 2019-20.
On the issue of robust delivery planning, the ORR highlighted ‘significant variances’ from initial delivery plans.
‘There was also a significant re-profiling of renewals work during the year, resulting in a 35% increase in renewals expenditure in the final quarter [winter months] compared to the previous three months,’ it highlights.
‘Carrying out more renewals work in winter months is potentially less efficient because, for example, there is more likely to be adverse weather. It may also lead to a lower quality product, which may increase whole life cost,’ the report points out.
One of the main arguments behind setting up Highways England was the efficiency savings it could make by having more control over long-term budgets. The report paints a mixed picture on this issue.
‘Highways England has identified £55m of efficiency improvements across its capital programme during 2015-16. Our assessment is that Highways England has achieved its internal efficiency target of £33m, though there is uncertainty about an additional £21m, in relation to savings on the company’s smart motorway programme,’ it found.
'The company needs to develop a clear plan to deliver capital savings to meet its target of £1.212bn by the end of the road period. Highways England’s reported efficiency improvement in 2015-16 represents 4% of the company’s requirement to deliver £1.2bn of efficiency improvements across the first road period as a whole. This means that the company will have to find significantly greater savings later in the five year funding period.’
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