Highways Agency - Safe roads, Reliable journeys, Informed travellers

Delivering in partnership

Key outcome

A more effective roads programme, with better evaluation of needs, and options, quicker delivery and lower impacts on the environment.

Our response

The commercial needs for reliable road transport must also be balanced with other wider interests. For example, we will take good care to address the local impacts on 5 million people living alongside or near our busy strategic roads. They, too, are our customers and we will continue to seek improvements in their quality of life.

Our network passes through internationally and nationally environmentally sensitive areas and locally valued areas too. For the sake of present and future generations, we must tackle the harmful impacts from heavily trafficked and congested roads.

We will set ambitious positive objectives towards minimising emissions and pollution, protecting and enhancing England's unique resources.

We will work in close partnership with other organisations that are stakeholders in the operation of our strategic roads. Working together, we will address the environmental and social impacts of the strategic road network.

We will start work this year on 11 route management strategies that will, in close consultation with local communities, address the needs of the whole route and set out all the actions that will be taken to address the problems in a 10 year plan. By 2003, these route management strategies will be in place for the complete core network.

There will also be considerable local involvement in the multi-modal and other studies. Out of these could come proposals for a targeted programme of bypass improvements, around 30 of which could be funded under the 10 Year Plan.

These are in addition to the 19 bypasses due to start by 2005, as part of the current targeted programme of improvements. We will begin work on developing these proposals as soon as they are identified by the Regional Planning Authorities and accepted into the programme.

We plan to involve people earlier in the design and development of road proposals. We will carry out as much as possible of that preliminary work in parallel, rather than in sequence. That will allow local people to play their part in the development of the scheme before plans become more firmly drawn up.

We will introduce new, faster ways of appointing engineering consultants to carry out initial design work. We also expect to involve very early on the "design and build" contractor, who will eventually construct the job - as we are piloting on the A500 Stoke Road/City Road scheme. We expect that as well as speeding up delivery, earlier involvement of the contractor will lead to schemes that are significantly cheaper to build.

Altogether, we aim to cut 3 to 5 years off the time taken to deliver less complex road building schemes, once they are added to the targeted programme of improvements. And, by speeding up our delivery, we will reduce the planning blight and uncertainty that can result from road improvement proposals.

We will develop new forms of contract to speed up delivery of both publicly and privately financed projects. PPP/PFI contracts, in various forms, will provide 25% of the major schemes funding needed to deliver these challenges, harnessing private sector finance disciplines to Agency objectives.

In parallel, we will be actively working with local communities to resolve local problems. We will bring forward a rolling programme of smaller, local improvements that will make our roads easier to live with.

These focused schemes will take early action to enhance the environment on and around our strategic roads, help restore local communities that are separated by our busy roads and make safer provision for recreational activities - like horse riding, cycling and rambling.

Where road improvements are taken forward, we will ensure that each is carefully assessed using the New Approach To Appraisal. The environmental, social and economic issues will then be brought together, using the new approach, before an investment decision is taken. To ensure that our contractors are as committed as we are to protecting the environment we will, where appropriate, make possession of an accredited Environmental Management System, a requirement to secure work in future.

We also recognise our duties as stewards for the land around our roads. We manage an overall area of diverse landscape that is the size of the Isle of Wight. We will play a full part in ensuring the continued success of the wildlife and plants that live around our roads. We will work closely with partners like English Nature, the Countryside Agency, English Heritage and the Environment Agency to develop biodiversity, landscape and heritage action plans.