Highways England

Highways England Company Limited (formerly the Highways Agency) is the government-owned company charged with operating, maintaining and improving England's motorways and major A roads. It operates information services through the provision of on-road signage and its Traffic England website, provides traffic officers to deal with incidents on its network, and manages the delivery of improvement schemes to the network.

Founded as an executive agency, it was converted into a government-owned company on 1 April 2015. As part of this transition, government set out its vision for the future of the strategic road network in its Road Investment Strategy. Highways England is now undertaking £15 billion of investment between 2015 and 2020 to improve the network in response to this.

History

The Highways Agency was created as an executive agency of the Department for Transport on 30 March 1994.

As part of the Department for Transport's 2010 Spending Review settlement, Alan Cook was appointed to lead an independent review of the government's approach to the strategic road network. It recognised that the Highways Agency was closer to central government than other infrastructure operators, resulting in a lack of a strategic vision and certainty of funding due to the wider policy environment in which it operated, as well as the limited pressure to drive efficiencies compared to that faced by regulated sectors. After an announcement on 27 June 2013 by Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, it became a government-owned company with the name Highways England on 1 April 2015.

Jim O'Sullivan became Chief Executive on 1 July 2015, replacing Graham Dalton.

Responsibilities

Highways England is responsible for operating, maintaining and improving the strategic road network (SRN). The SRN (the motorways and major A roads in England) comprises over 4,000 miles of road and includes various structures such as bridges, tunnels, drainage systems and technology assets including variable message signs and cabling. The SRN includes only around 2% of the total road length in England, but it carries around a third of all motor vehicle traffic in England.

Operating the network
Highways England's operations are split into regions that are roughly based on the regions of England. These regions are subdivided into 13 operational areas. Each area is managed and maintained by an area team (the Managing Agent; MA) and a contractor (the Managing Agent Contractor; MAC). Some sections of road are managed under DBFO contracts separately from the area teams.

Enhancing the network
In common with the regulated sectors, Highways England works to fixed funding periods called Road Periods. Each Road Period is currently five years in length, and a particular Road Investment Strategy (RIS) will broadly align with this. Before a new Road Period starts, Highways England will provide the Secretary of State for Transport with an SRN Initial Report, including an assessment of the state of the SRN, maintenance and enhancement priorities, and future development needs. Following this, the government produces a draft RIS setting out the high-level outputs that Highways England will need to deliver within the corresponding Road Period, alongside the proposed funding. Highways England will then respond with a Strategic Business Plan detailing its plans for delivering the RIS. This is reviewed by the Highways Monitor to assess whether the proposed requirements are deliverable with the proposed financial resources and sufficiently challenging. After the Strategic Business Plan and RIS are finalised, Highways England must deliver the agreed outputs and will be monitored on its progress by the Highways Monitor.

Development of the SRN is achieved through Highways England's capital investment programme, currently funded entirely by government through grant-in-aid and set out in the first Road Investment Strategy. For Road Period 1 (2015–20), Highways England is investing around £15 billion to deliver over 100 road improvement schemes, with additional funding to address other local challenges in proximity of the SRN relating to the environment; air quality; cycling, safety and integration; and growth and housing.

From 2020-21 onwards Highways England's activities will, at least in part, be funded by vehicle excise duty.

Organisation

Head office
The agency head office is in Bridge House, on a one-way gyratory in Guildford, Surrey. Previously its head office was in Dorking, Surrey. In 2014 the agency signed a ten-year lease with the owner of the Guildford facility.

National Traffic Information Service (NTIS)
Network Information Services (NIS), a Mouchel and Thales joint venture, operates the National Traffic Information Service (NTIS) on behalf of Highways England. NTIS is the information hub of England's strategic road network.

The £57 million service is based at Quinton, Birmingham and is responsible for providing accurate, historical, real-time and predictive traffic and incident information to businesses, the travelling public and Highways England's operations. It collects real-time traffic information from over 10,000 fixed sites on the motorway and all-purpose trunk road network from MIDAS and Traffic Monitoring Unit (TMU) electronic loops in the road surface and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras at the roadside. Additionally it uses anonymous floating vehicle traffic data (FVD) from vehicles to supplement the fixed traffic monitoring sites. NTIS also has access to nearly 2,000 CCTV cameras, 300 weather stations, 4,600 roadside electronic signs, 16,000 roadside electronic matrix signals and incident data from over 250 operational partners including the police and local authorities.

It processes this data to create useful intelligence for operational decision making and dissemination of current and predictive information to the public using the 4,600 roadside variable-message signs, the Highways England website (including a mobile version), social media channels such as Twitter and the telephone-based Highways England customer contact centre as well as distributing information to the media and businesses through a number of data feeds. These feeds are widely used by organisations such as the BBC and local newspaper websites for their own traffic information. Services such as Google Maps and sat-nav operators also use Highways England's data for their traffic information.

Area teams

The motorway network is divided into "Areas". They are contracts that are awarded by the Department for Transport. The Area Teams work alongside the Highways England Traffic Officer Service – providing incident support, emergency traffic management and infrastructure maintenance. They are responsible for the management and operation of the roads in their area. In 2009, fleet tracking has been deployed to assist area teams to manage their specialist winter maintenance vehicles during the Cold Snap.

Staff
Highways England employs uniformed traffic officers; on-road and control room, as well as specialist staff for work in engineering, surveying, accountancy, and administration. There is a graduate entry scheme, with general entry and specialist engineering entry options. For the Traffic Officer Service each team is supervised by a team manager, one of between six and eight such managers generally working together, to ensure 24-hour management cover.

Governance and accountability

Formal governance structure
Highways England is a private company limited by shares, wholly owned by the Secretary of State for Transport. The Highways England Board is the primary governance arm of the company and is accountable to the Secretary of State for Transport. The Board delegate responsibility of the day-to-day running of the company to the Chief Executive who, as the Accounting Officer, is accountable to the Permanent Secretary of the Department for Transport, as the Principal Accounting Officer, for the stewardship of public funds. The Principal Accounting Officer and Secretary of State for Transport are both ultimately accountable to Parliament for the activities and performance of Highways England.

Performance monitoring
The Infrastructure Act 2015 established the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) as the monitor for Highways England. ORR is responsible for monitoring and enforcing the performance and efficiency of Highways England, and advising the Secretary of State for Transport on its compliance against the Road Investment Strategy and Licence. The Act also established Transport Focus (previously Passenger Focus) as its watchdog with the purpose of promoting and protecting the interests of users of the strategic road network.

Traffic England
Traffic England is a website that gives information about the latest traffic conditions as well as details of any roadworks or events that may cause congestion. By selecting current motorway information users can see the average speed between individual motorway junctions, what is being displayed on all the variable-message signs, and images from traffic cameras. The website is run by Highways England's National Traffic Information Service.

Survive Group
The Survive Group is a partnership between Highways England, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), the breakdown/recovery industry and other road service providers. The Survive Group has been established to improve the safety of those who work on the road network and the travelling public and is also dedicated to the promotion of driving safety. The name Survive comes from Safe Use of Roadside Verges in Vehicular Emergencies.

The Survive Group website holds information on the Survive Group membership details and activities being undertaken by the working groups. It also supplies advice on how to drive safely in a wide range of driving conditions, advice on planning journeys. Survive also provides publications and new guidance produced by the Survive members plus news on new initiatives and forthcoming road safety events.

Historical Railways Estate
In 2013, Highways England took over responsibility for the Historical Railways Estate from BRB (Residuary) Limited.

See also
Highways England Traffic Officers
Transport Scotland
Transport for the North
North and Mid Wales Trunk Road Agent
South Wales Trunk Road Agent
Department of Economy and Transport in Wales
Traffic Radio
Roads Service Northern Ireland
Survive Group
London Streets
Off-Network Tactical Diversion Route
Design Manual for Roads and Bridges
Concrete step barrier
HADECS
National Roads Telecommunications Services, also known as the NRTS, which control the variable-message signs (VMS)

Notes

References

External links
 
 
 Highways England page of the Government of the United Kingdom
 
 
  – live traffic information from the HA including delays, roadworks, roadside message signs

Video clips
 Highways England YouTube channel

Category:Companies based in Guildford
Category:Road transport in England
Category:Road authorities
Category:Government-owned companies of England
Category:Government agencies established in 1994
Category:Organisations based in Birmingham, West Midlands
Category:1994 establishments in England
Category:Department for Transport
Category:Interested parties in planning in England
Category:British companies established in 2015