The High­ways Agency oper­ates, main­tains and improves the strate­gic road net­work in Eng­land on behalf of the Sec­re­tary of State for Trans­port. The strate­gic road net­work in Eng­land is some 4,300 miles long and is made up of motor­ways and trunk roads — the most sig­nif­i­cant ‘A’ roads. Other UK roads are man­aged by local and regional author­i­ties. While our net­work rep­re­sents only two per cent of all roads in Eng­land by length, it car­ries a third of all traf­fic by mileage. Sig­nif­i­cantly, two thirds of all heavy goods vehi­cle mileage in Eng­land is under­taken on the strate­gic road net­work, mak­ing it the eco­nomic back­bone of the country.

In order to main­tain England’s strate­gic net­work, we divide the coun­try into thir­teen (for­merly four­teen) areas. Each area is assigned an Area team and a con­trac­tor, known as a Man­ag­ing Agent (MA) or Man­ag­ing Agent Con­trac­tor (MAC).

The Area team, along with their cor­re­spond­ing Man­ag­ing Agent, is respon­si­ble for the main­te­nance of the Agency’s roads in their area. Area teams are part of our Net­work Deliv­ery and Devel­op­ment (NDD) Directorate.

Major Projects

We also man­age a series of larger projects, the Motor­ways and Major Trunk Roads Pro­gramme. This con­sists of over 100 projects cost­ing more than £10 mil­lion. These projects are either pub­licly funded or financed through public-private partnerships.

These projects are assigned their own project teams, and are the respon­si­bil­ity of Major Projects (MP) Directorate.

Pri­vate Finance Ini­tia­tive — Design, Build, Finance & Oper­ate (DBFO) Projects

Parts of the motor­way and trunk road net­work are man­aged under Pri­vate Finance Ini­tia­tive. These con­tracts are known as “Design, Build, Finance and Oper­ate” (DBFO) contracts.