Hello and welcome to the February newsletter
Hello, and welcome to ORR’s second newsletter of 2025 – an important and busy year for the ORR highways team! ORR is one of the few regulatory bodies that covers two areas of infrastructure – railways and roads in our case – and in April this year, it will have been a decade since Roads Reform which expanded our role beyond rail.
The Infrastructure Act 2015 gave ORR regulatory and enforcement powers to hold National Highways to account, to ensure that the company manages, operates and improves the strategic road network in England efficiently and effectively on behalf of road users and taxpayers.
The end of Road Period 2 (RP2) falls on 31 March 2025, and with it the last opportunity for National Highways to deliver on many of the commitments specified in the Government’s second Roads Investment Strategy (RIS).
The conclusion of RP2 means ORR’s annual assessment this year will not just look at National Highways’ performance and delivery in 2024 to 2025 but across the second road period as a whole. Our focus will therefore be to determine if the company has done all that it can reasonably have been expected to in pursuit of achieving its commitments and targets for the period.
Last year, we found National Highways to be out of compliance with its licence in respect to providing data and information that ORR may require (licence condition 7.3(e). But since then, we are pleased to see that the company is putting in improvements around providing this, as well as addressing broader findings in our investigation. We are encouraged by National Highways’ progress and have confidence that the actions being taken are on course to remedy the issues we identified.
The General Election and subsequent Autumn budget meant decisions by Government, normally published in July, which were needed to allow National Highways to finalise its Delivery Plan Update for 2024 to 2025, were delayed. Despite these difficult circumstances, National Highways continues to deliver. We continue to work with the company to ensure that we are still able to hold it to account in a fair and effective way while outstanding decisions are finalised.
The end of the road period also provides a good opportunity to look at National Highways effectiveness’ in stakeholder engagement. Therefore, this February we are sending out surveys to National Highways’ stakeholders to understand their views on how they feel the company engages with them. The results will help determine whether National Highways is meeting its licence conditions in relation to stakeholder engagement and advise on any improvements if necessary.
I hope National Highways stakeholders will be able to respond – it is important that ORR understands the views of others and we take this into account in performing our duty.
While we will continue to focus on holding National Highways to account to deliver its Road Period 2 commitments and targets, we are also advising and delivering on other important aspects of roads work for the Department of Transport.
March will see the publication of our third annual assessment of safety performance on the English strategic road network. This will provide an update on National Highways’ progress against RIS2 safety key performance indicators, as well as progress against the Transport Select Committee’s recommendations: 4 – assessing the effectiveness of smart motorways, and recommendation 6 – evaluating the effectiveness of the action plan to reduce the frequency and duration of live lane incidents.
And finally, following the announcement in the Autumn budget, which delayed the third Road Investment Strategy, we have been advising on the deliverability and affordability of National Highways’ plans for next year as the Department seeks to finalise an Interim Settlement for 2025 to 2026.
Rachel Gittens
Deputy Director, Strategic Road Network
Top stories
Call for evidence: review of revenue protection policies
In last month’s newsletter we asked for your views on the use of penalty fares, as part of our independent review of train operators’ revenue protection practices. The deadline for this call for evidence was extended from 17 January to 31 January. There’s still just time to respond if you and your networks are able to.
Over 70 rail leaders discuss stranded trains
Working with Transport Focus, we brought together over 70 senior leaders from across the rail industry on 15 January to collaborate on work to improve passenger welfare when a train is stranded between stations. This follows a number of high profile strandings in 2024.
The Birmingham event heard from industry colleagues on the ongoing work to review, update and test processes and plans for helping passengers and keeping them safe during these incidents. We were greatly encouraged by the level of engagement and enthusiasm evident across the day. ORR, with Transport Focus, will now work further with the rail industry to ensure attention is maintained on this vital area of ongoing work.
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