Written evidence submitted by Mr Philip Gadsby (SRI0006)

Thank you for the opportunity to submit evidence to the committee on the management of the RIS processes.

My name is Philip Gadsby, I live in Arundel, West Sussex, this submission is my personal submission and is made as I feel after interacting for years with Highways England and National Highways on this project that there are serious deficiencies in their processes and procedures, that can bring into question the investment decisions made by National Highways.

My experience with the RIS process has been based on the A27 Corridor project, initially a RIS 1 project, now something that seems to be split over RIS 2, 3 and 4.

• How effectively the RIS2 enhancements portfolio has been managed to date;

In my perception there are many similarities in the A27 project and the A303 project that the NAO did a report on, I shared the similarities of these project with Lee-Anne Murray the at the time Director of Transport VfM at the NAO.

Implicitly over time the Strategic Road Network needs upgrading, be this a function of population growth, growth in the physical size of vehicles or other factors.

What concerns me about the management of the RIS process by ‘Highways’ be this The Highways Agency, Highways England or National Highways, is their lack of critical or indeed managerial thinking.

Previously there had been at least two major pieces of work on the A27 Corridor, the 1970s Folkestone to Honiton Trunk Route Project and the South Coast Multi Modal Study (SoCoMMs) from 2002, these projects anticipated providing a balanced capacity solution through the corridor.

What is now anticipated at the time of writing is an unbalanced in capacity and timescale ‘solution’, that does not on the face of it fulfil the requirements laid out in the 2014 scoping document from DfT.

Looking at the managerial capacity and capability of Highways, it is concerning that they have issued 13 Erratum Reports on the Arundel part of the project and leave to proceed was granted for a Judicial Review of the project.

It is also concerning that the Independent Complaints Assessor for the Department for Transport, when reviewing a complaint about lack of adherence to the Nolan Principles stated on 5th October 2021, ‘I think it is probably best if this matter does now go to the Parliamentary Ombudsman.’  My constituency MP Andrew Griffith declined to refer the case to your ombudsman.

When RIS 1 was unveiled, with the remit given to Highways to make the A27 Corridor flow, it was assumed that an enabling project, the Chichester Bypass improvements, would be completed prior to the opening of these projects.  The Chichester project was cancelled, then put in RIS 1 and cancelled, interestingly this allegedly made no difference to the Arundel or Worthing to Lancing projects.

• Whether risks to the enhancements portfolio for the remainder of the RIS2 period are being well managed;

A criticism of RIS 1 was that as in many young organisations managing projects, there was no recognition of the finite capacity available in the country in various areas, be this plant and equipment, skilled workforce or supply of road building materials.  Too many projects were planned to go ahead at the same time, creating dysfunctional demand patterns on scares resources.

In this time of inflationary pressures in the construction industry and friction at national borders the supply of labour and plant and equipment is not nearly as elastic as it was.  It is unclear if these factors have been considered in the delivery plan for RIS 2.  For example, in the latest iteration of the A27 at Arundel project, the plans call for a viaduct to be constructed over the alluvial Arun Valley, requiring a number (large) of piling machines, it is unclear if sufficient are available with trained crews at an affordable price in the time period envisaged.

• What the impacts of delays and cost overruns are on the overall programme, and whether the revised programme can be delivered to schedule and on budget;

The delays at Arundel have resulted in the project here expanding from a c£250m one with an advertised BCR of 2.6 to one that in September 2020 had a BCR of 1.37, since then the costs of the project must have materially increased due to the inclusion of a viaduct in the scheme and the inflationary pressures in the construction industry, in 2019 the costs were anticipated to be £320 -£455m, I have seen redacted documents with an upside cost of over £1.0Bn.  With the requirement to obtain a DCO, the submission of which has been repeatedly delayed, the achievement of any time deadlines would seem to be as challenging as keeping to budget.

The writer has championed with Highways a solution to the A27 problems at Arundel that would have cost in 2019 it was estimated £150m, being a Wide Single Carriageway solution, that removes all but one of the choke points at Arundel thus conforming with the scope document and enabling traffic to flow, at Arundel.

As a point of interest, the RIS 1 first Consultation documentation stated that the A27 at Arundel would be fully open in 2023.

• What progress is being made on planning for the next Road Investment Strategy;

From the blinkered view of someone with an interest in the A27, the initial plan was for RIS 1 to deliver a free flowing A27 corridor to enhance the use of the road as reliable transit times that would be being delivered by a balanced infrastructure.

Sadly, we have seen schemes being pushed back down the RIS timetable with Arundel in RIS 2, Chichester as a RIS 3 pipeline project and Worthing to Lancing being a shadow of its former self as a £20m scheme to improve the 6km of road in question.

This planning would seem to be resulting in a vestigial part of the Folkestone to Honiton Trunk Route being built for an eye watering sum at Arundel, that is planned to cause rat running through local villages due to the creation of a new major bottleneck at Fontwell, that does not seem to be a RIS candidate at the moment, together with the uncertainty as to what will happen at Chichester.

From the point of the A27 Corridor project, there would seem to be very little joined up planning.

• What lessons from RIS2 need to be incorporated into RIS3 to ensure it is achievable and delivers on policy objectives;

The message that I have taken through this process is that Highways need to review what they have been tasked to do and the resource package that they have been allocated and speak truth unto power as to the realism of the task and thus the deliverability of the policy objectives.

I say this particularly thinking of the Worthing to Lancing project, initially £100m was allocated to make this 6km stretch of road in a built-up area a dual carriageway, a reality check would have shown that this was stretching credibility.

Taking a realistic view of the options for Worthing to Lancing, that boil down to some junction improvements, would reasonably bring into question the appropriateness of the scale of the project planned at Arundel.  There would seem to be a (very) small cohort of road users who would benefit fully from this project those who live and work on the A27 corridor between Fontwell and West Durrington, the new A27 choke points.

At Worthing, tunnelling under the town, building a new dual carriageway through the National Park to the north of the town and creating a grade separated route through the town were all rejected by Highways in their 2017 Worthing to Lancing Consultation on a £69m junction improvement plan that was timetabled to be completed in 2022.

This is saying that the project that was set up to supply a balanced capacity transport solution along the south coast is not being met by Highways, nor are the financial or timescale targets being met.  It will still be impossible for users of the A27 to accurately estimate their travel time between Portsmouth and Brighton, the new Highways Performance Metric as Chichester, Fontwell and Worthing will still be major pinch points.

• Whether the Government’s current and forthcoming roads investment programme is meeting the current and future needs of consumers and business;

As stated above, if the intent of the investment in the A27 corridor was to improve the Portsmouth to Brighton travel time and the reliability of same, then implicitly the answer is no, it is a bit like the caricatured army, hurry up and stop, hurry up and stop.  Car users and Commercial users of the road would appreciate it if there was a choke point free solution.  From a Strategic Management point of view Highways have not, it would seem, recognised that the plans that they are promulgating do not address the brief that they were issued with, which is a shame.

• Whether the Government’s roads investment programme aligns with other policy priorities, such as decarbonisation, levelling up, productivity and growth;

The intent of the RIS programme at its outset, would seem to have been to facilitate friction free travel through the country, or the particular case of the A27 the County, this intent is helpful to Growth, Levelling Up and Productivity.  The A27 is an unusual part of the SRN as it is not a radial route, it enables levelling up within the coastal plain area but does not necessarily facilitate journey times to London and as such is not a get out of London levelling up enabler.

• How RIS3 should take account of technological developments, and evidence on ways of increasing capacity on the Strategic Road Network (such as smart motorways and potential alternatives to them).

The period since 2020 has been interesting as regards technology and the substitution of travel for Teams or Zoom, with the advent and roll out of 5g etc also impacting on the need to travel.

An area of technology that would seem to need to be quality checked particularly for RIS 3 is the way and the quality of the process that Highways has for forecasting traffic flows.  In this project leave to apply for judicial review was granted with the observations: ‘The claim raises arguable questions in law in relation to whether something went clearly and radically wrong with the consultation in relation to the traffic figures;…’

A further ‘bug’ or in this case dysfunctional feature in Highways’ traffic forecasting model became apparent when investigating the anticipated rise in opening year traffic at Arundel.  The logic used was that any vehicle going between Chichester and Worthing would, being economically aware, use the A27, as it was the shortest route and thus the quickest and cheapest.  That is fine for a radial route, where the new road is a replacement for the old one, it is not appropriate for a circumferal route where there is a semi parallel road the A259, linking all the coastal towns and being a conduit the vehicles need to go there to deliver growth.

Apparently, besides forms of words indicating that Highways were working with the Local Highways authority, WSCC, the strategic traffic model does not integrate with the local traffic model, resulting in at one time, Highways saying a local road would have over 30k vehicles a day and WSCC saying under 20k, slightly concerning.

The lack of network wide integrity in the traffic model has resulted in a wide variation in the anticipated opening year traffic levels on the A27, something that has a major impact on the scale of the required infrastructure, thus cost and implicitly benefit from time saved.  Presently the A27 has c26k vehicles a day using the Fontwell to Arundel stretch, Highways have published opening year estimates of between 42k and 30.4k, not something that inspires confidence in the process.  The uncertainty of the volume of traffic on the SRN brings into question the benefits that accrue to the projects, an over 60% increase in traffic brings far more benefits than a 16%+ increase in traffic.

• Conclusion

There are on the face of it serious concerns about the capacity and capability of Highways to project manage the RIS process both financially and to timescale, this is not helped by uncertainty as to the validity of their traffic and cost figures, as is exhibited by the number of Erratum Reports issued and the variability in the traffic forecasts.

Thank you for the opportunity to submit my evidence to the Transport Committee’s inquiry on Strategic Road Investment.

January 2023