Better Transport

The Highways Agency is the Government agency that designs and builds trunk roads and motorway schemes on behalf of the Department for Transport.

The Highways Agency's 'battle plan'

The Highways Agency will plan to:

• Get the scheme prioritised in the Regional Funding Allocation – if it's a regional scheme. A national scheme is funded through a national Highways Agency pot and there are fewer opportunities to influence it
• Put the scheme out for initial consultation
• Prepare the business case
• Get Ministerial approval of the scheme into the Major Roads Programme
• Consult the public on route choices
• Announce the agency’s preferred route and safeguard it from development with a TR111 notice
• Prepare and publish draft orders and an environmental statement
• Announce a public inquiry
• Produce and publish its case, including an environmental statement, for why the scheme should go ahead
• Hold a public inquiry
• Get final approval from the Minister
• Put the road scheme out for tender

This simplistic 'battle plan' combines two processes that Highways Agency road schemes go through:

• A funding approval and appraisal process
• A planning (statutory) process

These processes – which aren’t official terms – run in parallel, and sometimes overlap, but it is helpful if you see them as two different processes with different campaigning strategies.

The funding approval and appraisal process The planning process

How a road's value is determined