Ministers ask Highways Agency to raise road maintenance game

The DfT has challenged the Highways Agency to “become a high performing asset management organisation” able to forecast the levels of future investment needed to maintain its network.

The DfT’s first strategic network performance specification for the HA (LTT 5 Apr) calls on the network operator to move beyond simply monitoring the current condition of its highways assets and instead start estimating likely deterioration based upon its planned maintenance programmes.

To do this, the specification for the period up to 2015 urges the HA to develop tools that model maintenance investment levels, the priority schemes for the available funding, and the condition levels that will result.

The Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme says on its web page that “many local highway authorities are already excelling in deterioration modelling”. HMEP is seeking to build on this good practice by encouraging councils to take a longer-term approach, entailing identifying the optimum point to carry out maintenance with the optimum treatment on any given road section. 

The new requirement for the HA comes as the Agency’s budget for maintenance is gradually reducing from an average of £900m a year under the last spending review period under the previous government to £700m in 2014/15 – and this includes additional funding unveiled by the Chancellor in the 2012 autumn statement.

The condition of the strategic road network continued to improve in 2012 but the HA will have £59m less to spend in 2013/14 on maintenance than it spent last year, £749m in total, a 7% reduction.

The DfT wants the HA to reduce the costs of effectively maintaining the trunk and motorway network. The Agency reported that the maintenance cost per lane mile rose by five per cent in 2011/12 compared to the previous year.

Graham Dalton, HA chief executive, says in the forward to the Agency’s business plan for 2013/14: “This year brings some big challenges as we continue our transformation into a high performance, low-cost enterprise.” The HA will tender three further asset support contracts this year to maintain a fifth of its network.

The Department plans to develop performance specifications covering five-year periods alongside indicative funding for the same periods. This would allow detailed five-year maintenance programmes to be drawn up.

Discuss this at LTT's Future of Highways North event on the 18 June