Climate Hazards and Highways Resilience: New Guidance for Local Authorities

Join CIHT for this webinar introducing a new suite of guidance to support Local Highways Authorities in adapting to, preparing for and responding to flooding, extreme heat and other climate hazards.

Climate-related disruption is becoming increasingly frequent and severe, placing growing pressure on highway networks, local communities and already stretched local authority resources. In response, CIHT and Local Partnerships have collaborated with practitioners from across the sector to develop a suite of guidance designed to help authorities move from reacting to events towards a more proactive and resilient approach to managing climate risk.

The webinar will provide an overview of the guidance suite which includes:

Highways Strategic Adaptation and Resilience Guidance
Operational Framework Guidance
Hazard-specific Operational Response Checklists

Authors Andrew Crudgington (CIHT Climate Change Associate) and Jon Munslow (Viasulis) will introduce the guidance, explain how the different documents fit together and discuss the key principles that underpin the approach. Helen Morrison (Department for Transport) will introduce the DfT’s Transport Hazard Summaries and Rachel Toresen-Owuor (Local Partnerships) will explain how the new materials fits with wider support and guidance available to the sector.

This will be followed by a panel discussion with senior professionals, including immediate CIHT Past President Mitesh Solanki, exploring how the guidance can support authorities respond more effectively to the challenges of a changing climate, what barriers to implementation remain, and how the highways sector can work together to further develop it approach to climate resilience.

The event also marks the beginning of a wider programme of engagement to support implementation and continuous improvement of the guidance. Participants will be invited to contribute views on future priorities, including further guidance development, training, tools and case studies.

Learning Outcomes

Understand the structure and purpose of the new climate hazards guidance suite, and their relationship to the DfT Transport Hazards Summaries and other support available to the sector
Explore how Local Highways Authorities can strengthen adaptation, preparedness and response arrangements
Learn about emerging practice from across the highways sector

Who is this event for?

This event will be relevant to anyone involved in planning, managing or responding to climate-related disruption on the highway network, including:

Heads of Service and senior leaders
Asset management professionals
Network and operations managers
Emergency planning and resilience practitioner
Highways engineers and service managers
Contractors and supply chain partners
Transport planners and policy professionals

Speaker details

Justin Ward (chair)

Andrew Crudgington

Andrew has been CIHT Climate Change Associate since 2021 and was previously Director of Policy at the Institution of Civil Engineers. He is leading the work on CIHT's forthcoming guidance for Local Highways Authorities on responding to disruption caused by climate events.

Helen Morrison

Helen Morrison - Resilience Science: Research and Advice Lead at the Department for Transport. With a background in operational meteorology, Helen specialises in the application of weather, climate and hazard science to support transport resilience. Her work focuses on providing evidence and advice on natural hazards and climate risks, helping government and transport organisations understand potential impacts and make informed decisions to improve resilience.

Jon Munslow

Jon Munslow has more than 37 years’ experience in highways, transportation, asset management and winter service, from front-line local government delivery through to national sector leadership. Founder of Viasulis Ltd Jon supports Local Highways Authorities and the highways supply chain in achieving better local roads, value for money and climate resilience.

He is Chair of the NHT Network, a Past President of the Local Government Technical Advisers Group, and a member of the UKRLG Climate Adaptation, Biodiversity and Climate Resilience Board. He also represents the UK through PIARC, where his focus is building climate resilience in road networks. Jon has led on several innovative sector tools that help Highways

Authorities meet the challenges of networks affected by severe weather and geohazards.
Jon’s work focuses on making resilience and adaptation guidance practical, usable and grounded in the real pressures faced by highway authorities before, during and after severe weather events.

Rachel Toresen-Owuor

As Senior Director, Rachel is responsible for work within Local Partnerships’ Environment practice area, leading and developing our climate adaptation and resilience support offers and delivering a wide range of services from carbon accounting to corporate retrofit and place-based delivery. Rachel led the development of the Climate Adaptation Toolkits for Local Authorities and Welsh Government and the development of the climate resilience support to local authorities and Welsh Government.  

Rachel has supported the development of supporting research for the Climate Change Committee's Fourth Independent Assessment of Climate Risk (CCRA4) and is a member of the Local Adaptation Advisory Panel. Rachel holds an MSc in Climate Change and Sustainable Development and has nine years Local Authority experience, where she led on sustainability, carbon and energy management, utilities procurement and climate and energy strategy development as well as embedding carbon reporting and monitoring into wider organisational processes.   

Panel discussion participants

Mitesh Solanki

Mitesh was elected President of CIHT in June 2025.

Mitesh is the Managing Director of Ringway Highways Services business that offers maintenance, improvements and whole life asset management services. He values relationships that enables customer satisfaction to be realised in an ever-changing environment. He has worked in this sector for 30 years and would encourage others to join as well as it caters for a wide variety of skill sets.

Ann Carruthers (Leicestershire County Council)

Ann Carruthers is Director of Growth, Environment and Transport for Leicestershire County Council responsible for highways, transport, growth, planning, environment and waste services. She leads a team of 1,000 people operating a predominantly in-house delivery model.

Prior to this Ann worked with local authorities across Scotland and England and spent a number of years with Transit New Zealand responsible for introducing sustainable transport options across New Zealand’s state highway system.

Ann is a Past President of ADEPT (Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport), a Fellow of the CIHT, Chair of Midlands Highway Alliance+ and a member of the Highways Sector Council.

Nigel Riglar (South Gloucestershire Council)

Nigel is the Executive Director - Place, leading the delivery of South Gloucestershire Council’s place shaping and management services. Previous roles include Commissioning Director for Communities and Infrastructure at Gloucestershire County Council and Deputy Chief Executive at Stroud District Council. Nigel was also responsible for setting up the Beacon Council Scheme for the Improvement & Development Agency, is a Past President of the Association of Directors of Economy, Environment, Planning and Transport (ADEPT) and current Chair of its Climate Change Board, a Member of the Building with Nature Expert Advisory Panel and Honorary Member of the Faculty of Public Health.