It sometimes seems the only thing everyone agrees on in the highways sector these days is that things need to change; that and the fact everyone needs more money, of course.
If you scratch a little deeper, and often this must be done ‘off the record’, you find a great deal of agreement on key issues but a resignation that change is the proverbial mountain to be climbed. And money, always money, stands in our way.
Like oxygen, funding powers the climb but the harder and higher the ascent, the thinner it gets stretched. Highways authorities might be armed with oxygen tanks of capital funding (five years’ worth now), but the everyday air of revenue cash becomes almost nonexistent the further you travel. Yet the view is not as bleak as is sometimes made out.
A recent round table, hosted by the esteemed RAC Foundation and sponsored by leading construction and services company Kier, was a clear case in point.
Assembled at the table were some of the great and good of the sector – household names if you like, if your household reads Surveyor. It laid bare the difficulties and divisions. However the attendees also demonstrated a genuine, consensual and indeed fraternal desire to see improvement and there was much agreement on some of the foundations that progress could be built on.
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