A case for better decision-making

BUILDING NEW TRANSPORT FACILITIES has become completely different in concept and rationale in the 200 years or so since the early rail and road entrepreneurs began to develop the first examples of what we now call infrastructure.

It is unlikely the pioneer engineers and their backers who laid down the first railway lines and highways were thinking in anything like the same way as governments do today, when they create huge investment programmes like the National Highways RIS3 and Network Rail’s Control Period 7, both of which are now under preparation.

In those early days, there would not have been talk about delivering economic growth and GDP as there is now, nor a strategic concern at providing a national transport network deemed to suit the needs of the national economy. Of course, Brunel, Telford, et al wanted to provide new transport connections and needed backers — private wealthy investors and government bodies — but their main proposition was to harness the opportunity of their visionary engineering ideas and improve the quality of people’s lives and unlock opportunities for them that were hitherto impossible. Where they fitted within the grand design of things was not a material issue.

Nowadays, any proposal for an equivalent piece of road or rail infrastructure is subject to a very complex regime of examination and appraisal, generally dependent to proceed solely on getting government approval and public funding, though sometimes that is used to leverage an element of private sector money by financial engineering, like PFI. The big decisions on whether schemes go ahead, and which ones are prioritised, are matters not for private individuals or businesses, but for government and public authorities, subject to a labyrinthine process of proposal, justification, planning approval, economic appraisal, analysis and construction programming, all of which, despite the significant resources involved, may not lead to anything actually happening on the ground for many years, if at all.

Understanding of all the information and issues involved in this process of commissioning and delivery is demanding and exhausting, and occupies the lives of a range of professionals who advocate, examine, challenge, and effectively help decide upon what does and does not get built. Politicians (and the public) are written into this script, but it often looks as though ‘the process’ has a life of its own, and they are mere bystanders, with the elected representatives simply there to just sign things off.

This week, a little more light than usual has been shed on one element of all this endeavour with the publication by the Department for Transport of National Highways’ full business case for the A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet road improvements scheme. This publication was an unusual move, as these business cases are usually closely guarded internal matters, only revealed at public inquiries or examinations when the inspector insists upon it. Indeed, this 270-page document, shown as having been written last July, has been redacted in a number of places, particularly where costs of construction are involved, presumably to avoid revealing actual tender information.

This scheme will upgrade the A428 between the Black Cat roundabout and Caxton Gibbet roundabout in the South Midlands with a new 10-mile dual carriageway and a number of junction improvements on the east-west route connecting Oxford, Milton Keynes, Bedford, and Cambridge and providing for onward journeys to the Ports of Felixstowe and Harwich. According to the business case, it sits in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, a globally significant area which is home to 3.3 million people, supports over 2 million jobs, adds over £110 billion to the UK economy annually, and is earmarked for an ambitious additional 1.1 million jobs by 2050. The sub-region performs well in both economic and social terms relative to the England average, it says, but that the scheme will also serve pockets of deprivation in the area. It is due to open in 2027.

The A428 upgrade aims “to enable growth in jobs and housing by providing a free-flowing and reliable connection” for the ten miles. Whilst this is considered as a standalone scheme, it is intended to support journeys along the east-west strategic road network transport corridor by providing a high-quality and reliable route between the A1/A421 interchange to the junction of the A1198, which in turn links to A14/M11, and is expected to meet the future forecasted traffic flows for this corridor.

“Transport modelling forecasts show that without the scheme, congestion and delays will worsen over time, and the inability of the route to accommodate trip growth will stifle economic growth” says the prospectus.

A Government Accounting Officer Assessment (AOA) was completed last October to align with the updated full transport business case: assessment and process procedures, which was submitted to the Department for Transport (DfT) Investment, Portfolio and Delivery Committee (IPDC) last July. The AOA was produced by National Highways in conjunction with DfT — the same two bodies who had prepared the Business Case. The ‘senior responsible owner’ sits within National Highways and the National Highways Chief Executive is the accounting officer for the expenditure which the project reports to, whilst the DfT IPDC committee, which it also reports to, is chaired by the DfT permanent secretary as principal accounting officer for the DfT group.

The updated full business case presents an overall cost for the upgrade of the A428 that is said to be affordable as part of the RIS2 portfolio. The project will extend into RIS3 and is deemed affordable within the RIS3 settlement as well.

At the time of the AOA, the value for money (VfM) of the scheme is classed as ‘medium ‘ with a current benefit-cost ratio of 1.63. The scheme is also identified as having key strategic benefits, including improving resilience and safety on the road network and driving growth in the region, which took the BCR up from 0.92 without these additional elements.

None of this figurework, even if soundly based and accurate, means the project is truly ‘affordable’ in national terms, or the best use of public money compared with other options for that expenditure, whether in transport or elsewhere. Who knows what the BCR would be for numerous other projects yet to be evaluated, or even thought about.

As a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project, legal powers for construction have been obtained through a Development Consent Order (DCO) as defined under the Planning Act 2008, and granted to National Highways as developer in August 2022 despite some opposition by campaigners..

In signing off the scheme to be built last November, Bernadette Kelly, Permanent Secretary, Department for Transport, and Nick Harris, Chief Executive, National Highways, as Accounting Officers, conclude “there is a strong strategic case for the A428 and at the time of this assessment, the BCR of 1.63 reflects the benefits for the region that this scheme will deliver. The scheme aims to enable growth in jobs and housing, reduce journey time and increase journey time reliability whilst also tackling safety concerns” which forms part of National Highways strategic objectives. The signatories say, “I am therefore satisfied that the programme presents a satisfactory use of public funds and should deliver wider economic benefits to the region and wider national economy.”

The above narrative and procedural issues, whilst different in detail, are matters that all major schemes are subject to in moving from conception to delivery. The particular interest in this one is in the appearance of the final business case as a published document, though after, it must be noted, the scheme has already been approved to proceed.

There is even a foreword to the newly released document from Guy Opperman, Roads and Local Transport Minister, in which he gives the project his imprimatur, though this must have been written more recently than the content of it was signed off, as Opperman was only appointed in November, whereas each page carries the July 2023 dateline.

The Minister asserts that “Our nation’s strategic road network is essential to the growth of the economy, and our future growth and prosperity depends on our ability to upgrade the network and improve connectivity between our towns and cities.”

According to the Minister, the scheme lies on one of the East of England’s busiest road links and will enhance journey times, support local and regional economic growth, create jobs, and improve employment and the environment for the communities between Milton Keynes, Bedford and Cambridge, leaving a lasting positive impact. It also aligns with the Department for Transport’s strategic aims to improve transport for the user and grow and level up the economy.

In NH’s first Roads Investment Strategy of 2015, the minister says “the Government identified and committed to the A428 as an important section of the strategic road network that required upgrade due to its longstanding problems of congestion, poor journey time reliability, and resilience.” The second Roads Investment Strategy in 2020 maintained that commitment.

Interestingly, not only has the Minister apparently appended these subsequent thoughts to the full business case prior to its surprising recent publication, but in doing so he confirms that the Government and DfT/NH effectively “committed” (his word) to building the “required” scheme back in 2015. This sounds very much like an effective decision made well before any of the evidence had been marshalled, or challenged, the business case actually prepared, or DCO examination conducted.

This deduction that such schemes are a shoe-in once on the ‘most wanted project’ list is hardly original, but the A428 case none-the-less crystallises some key issues for both professional practice and democratic decision-making, and the role of those professionals involved at a detailed level in working on the proposition of the road — or indeed for any other infrastructure project which has got onto a promoting body’s wish list.

Under our current system — not something that Brunel or Telford from the 19th Century would recognise, or even would those planning our major 20th Century road building programmes for the Inter-War years and after World War two — the scheme promoter makes and supports their own proposal through the decision-making system. This involves considerable public resources, and advocacy, whilst those who want to question the proposition or suggest alternatives must try to find the resources themselves if they want to interrupt its seemingly inevitable progress

Might not a better way, in our modern and supposedly democratic and inclusive society, be for the promoter of the scheme idea to table their thinking about the nature of the problem to be addressed, or the opportunity there to embrace, and to have that belief, and potential solutions relating to it, looked at in a genuinely independent way? This could be done by engaging the best available professional expertise, reporting their opinions to the inspector or examiner, or other decision-maker, rather than to the client as promoter? Conceptually, this would be a different framework, though the work undertaken would, in principle, be similar to the outline business case preparation and investigation into the practicality of available options.

Thinking along these lines has been advocated by Professor Phil Goodwin, who has recently witnessed and written in detail in his LTT column about his experience of the DCO examination of the major Lower Thames Crossing road scheme, and the many process shortcomings he perceives.

Another alternative, to avoid already committed-to schemes getting to the programming stage before wider discussion, might be to invite a range of suitable organisations to submit proposals as part of a paid-for competition held once the defined problem or opportunity specification is available. This would be a valuable challenge in its own right to the scheme promoters to marshal their thoughts about the ‘need’ for a scheme clearly for all to see and comment upon. Such ‘invitation to submit’ processes are already used in preparing concepts for land-use development site planning, and architectural schemes.

To those critics who may argue that these alternative approaches might slow down the process, it can be pointed out that the A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet scheme dates back over nearly 10 years to at least 2015, and under the current process work has yet to start on it.

A more exploratory, open and deliberative process of the kind suggested would have a range of benefits, including fostering a greater degree of open-mindedness towards alternatives, an improved perception of politicians and civil servants as not being stuck in conveyor belt mode with pre-decided projects of a familiar kind, and an opportunity for greater originality and innovation in how things are done. Plus it would also bring a more rewarding and professionally robust position for those transport planners, modellers, and other specialists, and their employing bodies, to bring their skills, expertise and imaginations more freely into this process. The current adversarial system, where consultants and advisers are engaged by the promoting parties, and sometimes by the opposing ones, to arm-wrestle with each other seek to convince the decision-makers to either give the go ahead to a specific proposition, or block it, seems no-longer to be fit for purpose, if it ever was.

We have moved a long way, in various iterations, since the Victorian Railway and Highway pioneers sought to build their schemes, and the national Motorway programme was being constructed in the 1950s and 60s, both done with high confidence that they were brilliant projects for the future, and allowing little space for self-doubt. It cannot be definitively or confidently the case that the current system, in the current circumstances, is the best and only possible, or most appropriate, way to look at transport infrastructure provision in the modern world, when we must increasingly recognise the consequences for the future world too.

‘Just do it’ as a slogan may suit the world of sport, but it looks inappropriate for billion-pound expenditures on transport schemes that go firmly into the queue for resources before any real tough questions have been asked of their promoters about their true necessity and desirability — and relative value for money.

Peter Stonham is the Editorial Director of TAPAS Network

This article was first published in LTT magazine, LTT887, 6 March 2024.