Select committee: Transport Committee
Conclusion 9
Sixth Report - Strategic road investment
Published 27 Jul 2023
Paragraph 52
Addressed to Department for Transport
Transport Committee Strategic road investment All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
Throughout RIS 1 and 2, there has been a consistent theme of overly ambitious portfolio planning, and National Highways has overspent and underdelivered. Despite delays in RIS 1, an even more ambitious portfolio was chosen for RIS 2. Schemes have been consistently pushed back into the following RIS portfolio, and some projects initially planned for RIS 3 (2025–30) have already been pushed back to RIS 4. Rather than the efficiency and certainty which road periods were meant to introduce, this has led to confusion and uncertainty. While current inflationary costs were unexpected, changes to the smart motorways programme and legal challenges to projects on environmental grounds could have been better anticipated given longstanding criticisms.
From: Transport Committee, Sixth Report - Strategic road investment (HC 904), paragraph 52, 27 July 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 20 October 2023 (deadline 27 September 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government's response to the Committee's report on strategic road investment includes agreement on two recommendations, partial agreement on two, and a position of "notes" on four others, with a stated commitment to publish its RIS3 investment priorities later in 2023.
- On maintenance, the government "agrees" that future investment should prioritise renewal of existing assets, stating that decisions on the balance of spending are made through the statutory RIS process, with more detail in the draft RIS3 "later in 2023".
- On fuelling the future vehicle fleet, the government "partially agrees", pointing to its EV Infrastructure Strategy and a zero emission HGV infrastructure strategy that is "expected to be published in 2024".
- On a live project dashboard, the government "agrees" but says a genuinely 'live' system "would not be practical", and will work with National Highways and the ORR "to explore the opportunity for more frequent public project reporting in one place".
- On scaling back complex enhancement projects, the government "notes" the recommendation, saying the ORR and IPA "did not suggest fundamental changes" for RIS2 and that larger schemes "inevitably have longer delivery periods" across road periods.