Highways Agency

The Family of Strategic Plans

The Agency will produce a Strategic Plan for each of the Investment Areas and the Investment Criteria.

These Plans will link our work and planning to Ministerial policies and explain the Agency's new role and how we intend to meet our new objectives.

They will encourage innovation, ensure a consistent approach, and help spread best practice throughout the Agency.

The Plans will also provide a link into the new Regional Planning Conference and Regional Planning Guidance system.

Each Plan will consist of a statement setting out our objectives and the ways and means of delivering those objectives. Where the Agency may not be able to deliver these objectives in isolation, the plans will consider the need to develop partnerships.

Plans will cover a 5-10 year time frame, but will be reviewed as necessary during that period.

Although we are producing individual Strategic Plans, there are strong links between them and they will form a family of documents encompassing the whole of the Highways Agency's new network operator role.

Maintain

The White Paper has made maintenance the Agency's top priority. The Strategic Plan is concerned with maximising the efficiency of maintenance by keeping the network in a safe condition whilst minimising:

• whole life costs
• disruption
• the effect on the environment

Operate

The Agency's new network operator role includes all that we do, but the Operate Strategic Plan is more specific. It deals with actively influencing and controlling how the network is used and the wider management of resources to meet customer needs, assist integration, and deliver an increased role for public transport.

The Plan will identify actions to help implement four inter-related and forward-looking themes identified in the White Paper:

• providing real time traffic and travel information
• actively managing traffic
• making better use of available capacity
• involving our customers more

Improve

The Government's Roads Review, "A New Deal for Trunk Roads in England" gave the Agency a programme to start 37 carefully-targeted schemes costing £1.4 billion on its core network within the next seven years.

The Plan will focus on the actions the Agency will take to implement this programme and consider our input to the development of any future major schemes that emerge via the new Regional Planning bodies.

Safety

Safety is a high priority; the Agency makes an important contribution to road safety in England and is committed to contributing to the Government's 2010 targets for reducing road casualties.

The Plan identifies target user groups, establishes specific safety objectives for each group, and identifies a range of issues and actions to help achieve casualty reductions. It will ensure a consistent approach to safety across the network and improve the management and monitoring of our safety work.

Environment

The Plan, "Towards a balance with nature", published November 1999, demonstrates our ambition to do more than in the past. It includes action plans to assist biodiversity, to manage local air quality, noise, waste materials and water quality, and for landscape, townscape and heritage issues.

Economy

The Economy Plan is concerned with reducing overall travel costs and increasing journey time reliability, minimising construction and maintenance costs, and with supporting regeneration.

Much of the detail may be covered in other Strategic Plans and the Plan will act as a signpost to actions contained elsewhere.

Accessibility

This Plan takes as its basis the White Paper's definition of Accessibility: "Improving access to everyday facilities to those without a car and reducing community severance".

It is concerned with improving access, both to public transport and in general, for all non-motorised users.It will include action plans to assist pedestrians, cyclists, equestrians and vulnerable user groups including disabled people.

Integration

The Integration Strategic Plan is primarily concerned with broader policy issues. It will explain how the Agency will assist the implementation of Government policies to integrate all forms of transport and land use planning to develop a better and more efficient transport system.

The Plan will provide a link to other Plans that detail actions to assist the integration between different modes of transport