Strategic Road Network
 |
|
| Government-owned company | |
| Industry | Highway Authority |
| Founded | 1 April 2015 |
| Headquarters | Bridge House 1 Walnut Tree Close Guildford |
|
Key people
|
Jim O'Sullivan (Chief Executive) Colin Matthews (Chairman) |
| Owner | HM Government |
|
Number of employees
|
4,392 (2017) |
| Website | gov |
Highways England (formerly the Highways Agency) is a government-owned company with responsibility for the operation, maintenance and improvement of the motorways and trunk roads in England. It operates information services through the provision of on-road signage and its Traffic England website, provides traffic officers to deal with incidents on its network, and manages the delivery of improvement schemes to the network.
Founded as an executive agency, it was converted into a government-owned company on 1 April 2015. As part of this transition, government set out its vision for the future of the strategic road network in its Road Investment Strategy. Highways England is now undertaking £15 billion of investment between 2015 and 2020 to improve the network in response to this.
The former Highways Agency was created as an executive agency of the Department for Transport on 30 March 1994.
As part of the Department for Transport's 2010 Spending Review settlement, Alan Cook was appointed to lead an independent review of the government's approach to the strategic road network. It recognised that the Highways Agency was closer to central government than other infrastructure operators, resulting in a lack of a strategic vision and certainty of funding due to the wider policy environment it operated in, as well as the limited pressure to drive efficiencies in the way faced by regulated sectors. Following an announcement made on 27 June 2013 by Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, it became a government-owned company with the name Highways England on 1 April 2015.
The Chief Executive, Jim O'Sullivan assumed his post on 1 July 2015, replacing Graham Dalton in that role.
The strategic road network (SRN) - the motorways and trunk roads in England - comprises over 4,000 miles of road and includes various structures such as bridges, tunnels, drainage systems, and technology assets including variable message signs and cabling. While the SRN represents around 2% of the total road length in England, it carries around a third of all motor vehicle traffic in England.
Highways England's operations are split into six regions that are roughly based on the regions of England. These regions are subdivided into 13 operational areas. These areas are each managed and maintained by an area team and a contractor, known respectively as the Managing Agent (MA) and the Managing Agent Contractor (MAC). In addition, there are a number of sections of road that are managed under DBFO contracts separately from the area teams.
...
Wikipedia