The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has said no action will be taken against Highways England despite the Government-owned company failing to meet a key safety commitment.
Highways England had pledged to ensure that the majority of those roads with a 1 and 2 iRAP/EuroRap safety rating would be improved to 3 stars over the first road investment strategy (RIS 1) period covering 2015-2020.
The commitment was made in the first Highways England delivery plan for the period but was quietly downplayed or dropped, and not mentioned in later delivery plans.
The roads authority admitted to Highways last year that it was struggling to meet the pledge.
Now Highways can reveal that the ORR had no intention of holding Highways England to account over the target, as it had decided behind the scenes the commitment was ‘undeliverable’.
Based on an understanding of how ORR monitors Highways England this conclusion was almost certainly arrived at between the parties, rather than ORR deciding on its own.
An ORR spokesman said: ‘In line with our duties as set out in the Infrastructure Act, we take a proportionate and targeted approach to monitoring Highways England. This means that we do not investigate every area of Highways England’s activities in detail.
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