National Highways routinely claims that safety is its “top priority” but this spin is not borne out by its spending decisions or its poor record of reducing serious casualties on its network.
Since coming into existence (as Highways England) in 2015, the company has spent a fraction of its huge budgets on safety schemes, with the vast majority going on schemes to increase road capacity, including so-called “Smart motorways”. Indeed, its biggest scheme, the Lower Thames Crossing will actually increase road casualties, rather than reduce them.
Unsurprisingly, in its latest report on safety on National Highways’ strategic road network[1], its regulator, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), said the company remained off target for reducing the number of people killed and seriously injured (KSI) by the end of 2025.
National Highways has also been accused of a lack of transparency over what it is – or isn’t – doing to reduce casualties, including refusing to publish improvement plans for spurious reasons. It has also implicitly dropped a target to achieve “zero harm” on its network by 2040.
Inadequate spending
When National Highways’ £27bn budget for the 2020-25 road investment strategy (RIS2) was announced, just £140 million (0.5%) was allocated for a “designated fund” covering not just safety but “Safety and Congestion”[2].
In July 2020, a few months after the second RIS period began, the ORR published a review of the company’s safety spending carried out by charity the Road Safety Foundation[3]. It found that current levels of investment in specific casualty reduction activities were “very small in relation to total road investment”, with spending “focused on a small proportion of the network, not necessarily high risk, with goals of reducing congestion and increasing capacity”.
The report argued that the company should begin work to generate a significantly higher programme of safety investment for the (third) RIS that was due to begin in April 2025 but it appears that no such thing happened.
An early plan for RIS3, published in May 2023, promised “an even greater emphasis on safety” but set out very little by way of concrete plans[4]. For example, a 2020 survey found that around 896km (557 miles) of the strategic network fell below the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP) 3-star safety benchmark[5] but National Highways said it would improve just 17 stretches of these roads, totalling 147 miles.
The company’s £4.8 billion single-year settlement for 2025/26[6] includes total designated funds of just £89m across four areas, including safety. This means that dedicated safety spending is likely to be less than 0.5% of the company’s budget. It’s therefore hard to see how this paltry expenditure on safety backs up National Highways’ chief executive statement that: “safety remains our number one priority”[7].
These are also sums of money dwarfed by the amounts that National Highways has had to spend rectifying its “Smart motorway” debacle, which many people feel are unsafe.
Safety vs Enhancements
Transport Action Network has raised concerns that National Highways uses the poor safety record of routes on which it has for years failed to implement safety measures as a justification for building entirely new roads.
The £1.5 billion A66 Northern Trans-Pennine project provides a clear example of this. National Highways wants to turn remaining sections of the route into dual carriageway, including entirely new stretches of road, and make some improvements to some junctions under a mega-project.
In February 2025 TAN published a report by a respected and highly experienced transport planner, who looked at the number of KSI casualties over eight years and questioned National Highways’ claim that clusters were located on single carriageway sections[8]. He identified a series of safety measures that could be implemented for a fraction of the £1.5 billion proposed to be spent on the upgrade (less than 0.2% of the cost of the dualling project) and would be quick to implement, whereas the dualling project would take several years to complete.
On a national basis the £1.5 billion, if invested in road safety measures as set out by the Road Safety Foundation, could treat 3,500 miles of roads and save 10,000 deaths and serious injuries over 20 years[9]. It would also deliver a good economic return, being classified as “high” value for money. In comparison, if the money was spent on the A66 project, which is classified as offering “poor” value for money[10], it would only treat 17 miles of single carriageway road and overall save fewer than 31 deaths and serious injuries over the same time period[11].
Missed targets
National Highways was set key targets to reduce KSI casualties during both the (first) 2015-20 RIS[12] and for RIS2[13], based on a baseline of the average annual number of KSIs during the period 2005-09.
Its target for the first RIS was for a 40% reduction; it met this target but the ORR said the reduction in 2020 was “primarily due to lower traffic levels” because of the pandemic[14]. In fact, when traffic returned closer to normal levels in 2022, KSIs were down just 38% against the baseline and therefore in breach of the 2020 target[15]. With the RIS2 target set at a 50% reduction by 2025, National Highways is a long way off meeting these targets.
In 2023, there were 1,913 KSIs on National Highways’ network, which was 39% below the baseline and therefore higher than the 2020 target and nowhere near the RIS2 target of a 50% reduction by 2025[16].
Inaction and secrecy
In a report published in December 2023, the ORR revealed it that had required the company to “transparently” produce by the end of March 2024 a “robust plan” with “additional interventions” during 2023-24[17].
However, both organisations refused to let the public see this document, with National Highways claiming that some actions had to be consulted on and the ORR declaring that it had allowed the company to demand that the “transparent” report be treated as confidential[18].
Concerns that this secrecy would allow National Highways to backslide on the “robust” plan were heightened when it said the actions within it were “subject to relevant risks”, which it said it would manage “where possible”[19].
In March 2025, the ORR revealed[20] that National Highways had only delivered 22 of the 41 actions in the plan, with 10 more “expected” that month and 11 planned for later in the year and therefore outside the 2024-25 financial year in which all schemes should have been delivered.
As part of its 2025-26, interim settlement National Highways was required to produce a one-year “safety action plan”[21]. However, as of June 2025 it had not published this plan either but said it will form part of its delivery plan for the year to be published in the summer.
Zero Harm remains a pipe dream
National Highways has a longstanding target or “ambition” to achieve “zero harm” on its network by 2040, which covers both road users and roadworkers. The date is cited in both the RIS 1 and RIS 2 documents. However, it has now quietly dropped the date from its Road to Zero Harm initiative[22] and has refused to reaffirm it publicly and questioned whether the target is “credible and realistic”[23].
The ORR has also quietly colluded in this process of dropping the target. In its December 2023 report it said it was “important that National Highways continues to focus on its longer-term ambition of achieving zero harm on the SRN by 2040 and had “commissioned independent research to assess and prioritise the actions it can take to achieve this”. However, its next report made no reference to the target, other than to say that the research was looking at “the achievability of zero harm by 2040”, implicitly preparing the ground for the target to be dropped, rather than holding the company to account.
What’s the solution?
National Highways needs to do more than pay lip service to improving road safety and to spend a significantly higher share of its budget on the issue. It needs to reinstate the 2040 target and then seek to achieve it, rather than undermine it through inaction and underinvestment.
The company also needs a regulator that properly holds it to account, rather than colluding with it when it seeks to move the goalposts on safety. As we have seen in other sectors, when the regulator fails to regulate, the public then often suffer the consequences. In this instance it is thousands of people every year being needlessly killed and seriously injured on our strategic road network.
[1] Third annual assessment of safety performance on the strategic road network
[2] Road Investment Strategy 2: 2020-2025
[3] REVIEW OF HOW HIGHWAYS ENGLAND PRIORITISES INVESTMENTS TO IMPROVE SAFETY OUTCOMES
[4] cre22_0102-srn-initial-report-2025-2030_vn-updated.pdf
[5] Highways Magazine – National Highways reveals latest safety rating for SRN
[6] Interim Settlement: Investment and management of the strategic road network from April 2025 to March 2026
[7] National Highways’ Annual report and accounts 2024, page 7 (A message from our Chief Executive)
[8] Improving safety on the A66 – faster, cheaper – Transport Action Network
[9] Driving Change: Investing in Safer Roads, Crash Risk Mapping Results 2024 – Britain’s motorways and ‘A’ roads, Road Safety Foundation – the benefits of investing £1.5bn have been calculated on a pro-rata basis using the benefits derived from investing £2.5bn as set out in Table 2, page 6
[10] A66 Northern Trans-Pennine project accounting officer assessment (October 2022) – GOV.UK
[11] A66 Northern Trans-Pennine Project: 3.7 Transport Assessment, National Highways, June 2022, Table 9.9 Cobalt Assessment Results: Casualties Saved (Note figures in this table are for a 60 year appraisal period so need dividing by three for a 20 year period)
[12] Road investment strategy: 2015 to 2020 – GOV.UK
[13] Road Investment Strategy 2: 2020-2025
[14] Benchmarking National Highways 2021 progress update – Published February 2022
[15] Second annual assessment of safety performance on the strategic road network
[16] Third annual assessment of safety performance on the strategic road network
[17] Second annual assessment of safety performance on the strategic road network
[18] Highways Magazine – Exclusive: National Highways keeps safety plan confidential, as deadline approaches
[19] Highways Magazine – Exclusive: Secret talks over secret safety plan
[20] Third annual assessment of safety performance on the strategic road network
[21] Interim Settlement: Investment and management of the strategic road network from April 2025 to March 2026
[22] Road to Zero Harm – National Highways
[23] Highways Magazine – National Highways in discussions with DfT over key safety target
JOIN OUR NETWORK
Signing up will allow you to access our monthly newsletter and the latest actions and events