Highways England (HE) is a body corporate, established on 8
December 2014. On 1 April 2015 it was appointed as a
strategic highways company by the Secretary of State for
Transport by way of an Order in accordance with section 1 of
the Infrastructure Act 2015. HE is the
highway, street and traffic authority for the Strategic Road
Network (SRN).
The SRN comprises approximately 4,300 miles of motorways and
major ‘trunk’ A-roads in England. While the SRN represents
only around two per cent of the total length of England’s
road network, the Department for Transport estimates that it
carries roughly one-third of the total motor vehicle traffic.
The establishment of HE included a multi-year funding
settlement, called a Roads Investment Strategy (RIS). To date
there have been two RISs:
-
RIS 1 ran from 1 April 2015 to 31 March
2020. It included a headline £15.2 billion investment
figure. Major schemes announced as part of RIS 1 included
the controversial Stonehenge Tunnel, completion of the M62
smart motorway, and dualling the A1 from London to
Ellingham.
-
RIS 2 began operating on 1 April 2020 and
will run until 31 March 2025. It is funded directly from
motoring taxes – Vehicle Excise Duty – via a roads fund.
The RIS 2 budget is £27.4 billion. RIS 2 was published
alongside the 2020 Budget, which highlighted three schemes
that are part of RIS 2: dualling the A66 Trans-Pennine
route, upgrading the A46 Newark bypass, and building the
Lower Thames Crossing. HE has also been asked to make £2.3
billion of additional savings on operating and capital
expenditure during RIS 2.
The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) is the statutory ‘monitor’
of HE and its delivery of the RIS programme. Transport Focus
is the statutory road user ‘champion’: it publishes an annual
Strategic Roads User Survey and other work on issues such as
the adequacy of information provided by HE to its users.
Campaigners are currently trying to raise funds to bring a
judicial review against the Government over RIS 2 on grounds
of climate change and air quality.
Background on the SRN and HE can be found in Commons Library
briefing paper Strategic Road Network
(SRN), CBP 1448, August 2015. Papers on other
road-related issues are available on the Commons Library
website.
Please note that this paper is
England-specific. The management and funding of
the major road networks in Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland are devolved:
- Transport Scotland has a directorate dedicated to
managing Scotland’s trunk road
network.
- The Welsh trunk road
network is operated, maintained and improved by two
public sector organisations: North and Mid Wales Trunk Road
Agent (Gwynedd Council) and South Wales Trunk Road Agent
(Neath Port Talbot CBC).
-
DfI
Roads is the sole road authority in Northern
Ireland, responsible for public roads, footways, bridges,
and street lights.
