Highways Agency - Safe roads, Reliable journeys, Informed travellers

Corporate Social Responsibility

Our purpose is to support the sustainability of the nation as a whole by operating, maintaining and improving the England's strategic road network. We do not generate a profit - all of our funding is used to deliver this important public service which, in turn, helps to sustain both national and regional economies and supports the various communities that we serve.

We also recognise that we have a wider responsibility beyond the focus of providing a safe and reliable strategic road network. In this section of the report, we set out
the progress we have made towards:

• Improving our response to the global challenge of climate change;
• Delivering our sustainable development action plans;
• Improving our sustainability reporting;
• Planning and sustainable development;
• Improving our impact on the environment;
• Implementing measures to care for and develop our staff.

Climate change

Climate change is now commonly recognised as the most significant and urgent environmental risk faced by the planet. Global and national strategies and targets press for action from governments, organisations and individuals.

Our role, as a provider of key infrastructure within the UK, means climate change is an important issue for us, both in terms of minimising the Agency's contribution to the causes (mitigation) and managing the likely impacts of climate change (adaptation). It is clear that national policy, and increasingly backed by legislation, is a driver for reducing the Agency's carbon emissions. Our challenge is to ensure our network is fit for purpose whilst safeguarding the environment for present and future generations, making sure our activities and practices have as little adverse impact as possible on society and the wider environment.

During 2008-09 we further developed our response by:

• Setting up a new team whose sole focus is to lead on business change activities relating to sustainability and climate change.
• Developing our Climate Change Adaptation Strategy and implementing various measures to ensure that the way we work is adapted to the challenges of a changing climate.
• Launching our Carbon Calculation Framework in September 2008 to measure and understand the Greenhouse Gases emissions associated with delivering our business.

Sustainable Development Action Plans

Every year, since 2007 we have developed and published a Sustainable Development Action Plan. This provides a useful platform to communicate to our staff and partners the importance of sustainable development and also enables a focus on activities to improve our business from this perspective. We report our progress against the action plan to the Sustainable Development Commission and this is published on our website.

A major source of our greenhouse gas emissions is the electricity we use on the road network, in particular lighting. Network energy consumption accounts for around a quarter of our entire carbon footprint. This energy use has been the focus of our Sustainable Development Action Plans which resulted in the standards for lighting being revised. As a result, in early 2009 we began a programme of 'midnight switch-offs' where network lighting is switched off at midnight on selected lengths of motorway. While savings are modest during the pilot phase, we anticipate that further roll-out of the switch-off together with the introduction of improved lighting technology will offer huge potential for reduction in both emissions and financial costs.

Sustainability reporting

In 2008-09 HM Treasury formed a Sustainability Working Group to develop guidance on sustainability reporting. We were invited to be members of the group and continue to be closely involved in its work.

Planning and sustainable development

Housing and business development requires effectively planned transport arrangements to support it.

The Highways Agency is a key delivery partner, working together with Government Departments, Regional Offices, regional and local planning and transport authorities, public transport providers and developers, to influence planning policy and help shape development plans and their outcomes. Through our participation in the development and revision of Regional Spatial Strategies and the preparation of Local Development Frameworks, we support the delivery of development whilst maintaining a safe and efficient network for longer distance traffic. Working with developers we ensure that the traffic and environmental impacts of highways works resulting from development are minimised.

Our engagement in the planning system reduces pressure on the network and makes a significant contribution to relieving congestion and improving journey time reliability.

We also work with companies on a voluntary basis to devise travel plans, or use the planning application system to formally require developers to include travel planning measures in their proposals. This year we have delivered nine voluntary plans with employers at key development sites.

Environmental performance

During 2008-09 we successfully met our targets relating to air and water quality, and biodiversity, and developed baseline data on the greenhouse gas emissions arising from our business activities.

Other key environmental initiatives undertaken in 2008-09 included:

• In response to the EU Environmental Noise Directive we began developing road noise maps and an action plan for England's roads. The results were published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in spring 2008.
• We continued to populate our cultural heritage database and develop cultural heritage asset management plans for sites near our network.
• We undertook research into measures to further mitigate the impact of floods on the network.

Customers, staff and contractors

Workforce Strategy

Strong professional skills are a prerequisite for the management of large contracts and the delivery of technically complex projects on time and to budget. To deal with these challenges and those that lie ahead we recognise that we need to make the most of our people, and build individual and collective capability. We have therefore introduced a Workforce Strategy Programme of linked projects aimed at:

• strengthening our internal skills and capability;
• enabling more flexible working to meet priorities and
• improving our management of performance.

We have taken the following steps this year to progress the Programme:

• We have delivered a targeted leadership and improved people management programme;
• We have modernised our pay and reward structure for senior managers to more closely link rewards to contribution, skills acquisition and deployment, and the market
• We are implementing flatter, more flexible organisational structures
• We are increasing our Programme/Project Manager capability and awareness;
• We have enhanced our graduate scheme recruitment.

Training

The Highways Agency invests in learning and development to ensure that we have the required, skills, knowledge, behaviours and ways of working to meet stakeholder expectations efficiently and effectively. During 2008-09 we focused efforts on improving our leadership capabilities, project and programme management skills, and our commercial and contractual competence.

Staff involvement

We recognise the importance of consultation with staff and their recognised trade union representatives, and provide staff with opportunities to contribute to decisions affecting their jobs and careers. We aim to engage and involve all our staff with regular team briefings, cascaded throughout the organisation, and through regular meetings with recognised trade unions.

Diversity

As part of our commitment to diversity we have developed action plans for our staff covering race, disability and gender, as part of the DfT's quality schemes.

And for our customers, we have published guidance for women road users in a DVD and magazine format, and are developing a similar guide for disabled road users.

Sickness absence

The Highways Agency has a robust set of sickness absence policies and procedures in place to support managers in managing attendance. This year we have rolled out a significant communication and training programme for middle and senior managers to help them address attendance issues more effectively, which has resulted in a significant improvement in absence levels. For the financial year 2008-09 the average sickness per head was 7.59 days which was just short of our target of 7 days per head and represents an improvement of 19% on the figure for 2007-08.

During 2009-10 we have continued to implement a successful and well regarded Health and Well Being strategy which includes health screening for all staff alongside other support such as Occupational Health and our Employee Assistance Programme.

Health and safety

We take our responsibility for the health, safety and welfare of our staff extremely seriously. The good health of our workforce plays an important role in business delivery, and during the year we reviewed our approach to occupational health management.

To enable all of our staff to understand risks and appropriate actions, we have developed a range of e-learning packages and tools which assist them to take responsibility for themselves and others.

We have concentrated on minimising the risks faced by our traffic officers working on the high speed network. We have more than 4,000 road workers at any one time - approximately one for every mile of our network - working day in, day out to keep the roads safe and well maintained for road users.

To enhance the safety of our road workers we have launched our Respect campaign, supported initiatives by the Institute of Highways and Transportation to improve driver behaviour through road works, and investigated ways of joint working with industry to reduce risks.

We also recognise our role as a leading construction client, and are building on current good practice, with the objective of being considered an exemplar client in health and safety by 2011 through delivery of the actions in our Design, Construction and Maintenance Strategy.