The Office of Rail and Road (ORR)  said that National Highways delivered against its 2020 safety target to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on the strategic road network (SRN).

The ORR said that over the next year, National Highways must: improve its performance against its 10-minute response time on certain sections of smart motorways; provide better evidence of how it is considering the long-term needs of its assets when making renewals decisions across the SRN – England’s motorways and major A-roads; and provide a robust plan to meet its 2025 biodiversity targets.

However, now that traffic levels have returned to close-to pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic levels, there is much more to do if the company is to meet its demanding 2040 ‘zero harm’ goal to eliminate deaths and serious injuries on its network.

ORR reported that National Highways has continued to deliver the government's smart motorways action plan, largely to time. 

However, ORR has raised concerns about National Highways ability to achieve faster attendance by traffic officers to road incidents on certain sections of smart motorways. 

ORR noted that the company was short of achieving its target of a 10-minute average traffic officer response to live lane incidents on sections of all lane running motorway with emergency areas more than one mile apart.  

Feras Alshaker, Director of Planning & Performance, said:

"While the company continues to work towards delivering its safety targets, we've had some concerns over the company’s ability to achieve its target of a 10-minute response for traffic officers on certain sections of smart motorways. It must continue to focus on reducing its response times on these sections of motorway."