Legislation to transform the Highways Agency from April next year into a government owned company – a GoCo – was set out in the Infrastructure Bill in April, creating a legal framework for the new entity to oversee England’s strategic roads network.
The key documents relating to how the new organisation will operate and be governed have just been published.
The UK’s roads industry will be keen readers of all of this, and will be paying especially close attention to the small print of what duties the new entity will have towards ensuring a smoother demand for road construction and maintenance services.
Some scepticism could be excused, as never has an industry been so susceptible to being used as a political football as has the roads sector for the past 20 years or more.
Cuts over the past five or six years since the recession and credit crisis ushered in the era of austerity has granted us some of the most potholed roads of any advanced economy. The new regime promises an end to all that.
The House of Commons’ Transport Select Committee is not convinced. Its report Better Roads: Improving England’s Strategic Road Network in May said the GoCo will not have any new funding streams – which is a hint that road user charging might be needed – will still be subject to government policy changes, and would be more expensive than the current set up due to the new costs of overseeing its operations.
A key feature of the GoCo is that it is to be government owned, but independent. Its job will be to implement the new Road Investment Strategy (RIS).
The government says it will invest over £24 billion to upgrade the strategic roads network in England between 2010 and 2021. It promises to spend £6 billion on road maintenance in the current Parliament and £12 billion in the next.
Th e new company will be open to legal action if its fails in its duty to maintain the road network in a safe and serviceable condition.
Much might be made of the argument that the UK’s roads have fallen into such a state of disrepair due to under investment that they are not in a safe and serviceable condition at present.
The first RIS is to be published in the Autumn which will be an opportunity for the government to confi rm that it is serious about the planned level of investment.
If it succeeds in ending the stop-go policies of the past it will be welcomed by the construction industry.
But the jury will be out for quite a while on whether it will become just a stop-go GoCo.
Nick Barrett
Editor