Better Transport

When you and your group are fighting a Highways Agency scheme, your energies will likely be directed in one of two ways:

• Influencing the business case and the Minister's opinion about whether to approve the road
• Fighting the scheme through the planning processes, including at a public inquiry

Getting in early is the key to success, although that doesn't mean that it is impossible to stop Highways Agency road schemes after they have been approved into the roads programme. It has been done before and can be done again! It takes on average about seven years to get a road scheme off the drawing board to laying the tarmac. The longer it goes on the harder a scheme becomes to stop, but road schemes have been stopped at the eleventh hour - especially in the 1990s, most famously with the East London river crossing through Oxleas Wood.

Motorway widening schemes and large trunk road schemes such as the A14 are considered national schemes. Funding for them comes out of the central Highways Agency road building fund, not out of the regional funding allocation, so there are fewer opportuities to oppose them.

You can find your scheme on the Highways Agency website. You can receive news about your scheme from the Highways Agency. After subscribing, you will be asked to choose which road projects you’d like to be kept informed of.

The scheme's page includes details of the Highways Agency staff person in charge of the scheme.