By John Challen

A recent review commissioned by the UK Roads Leadership Group (UKRLG) around the areas of emergency preparedness, response and recovery has laid bare the highway sector learnings when it comes to extreme weather events. Within the report, there are number of recommendations for councils and local authorities around the UK, which could impact their plans for sustainable transport offerings.

“We've been doing a winter survey for a number of years, which basically asked questions about how much salt is used and how many times gritters go out,” says the review’s author Dr Hugh Deeming, a research consultant with more than 20 years of experience in community resilience.

“It's very much focused on two hazards: snow and ice. But extreme weather is about a range of hazards, and resilience is about hazards and threats. For this survey that informed the review, we worked with John Lamb, Chair of the Adaptation, Biodiversity and Climate Change Board (part of UKRLG) and started to push the sector to think about its position as a lifeline manager in a very complex and hazard-prone world.”

From what Deeming calls a very basic list of questions came a representative sample of responses that essentially said the status quo is “fine”, partly because it is covered by several existing projects such as Live Labs and various winter service innovations. 

“The main message that comes from the review is the fact that we've been investing a lot in carbon mitigation and we're getting much better as a nation at reducing emissions as a result,” Deeming explains. “But everybody knows that we're not very good at adaptation. The prevailing focus, on what climate change in 2040 and 2080 will look like, allows us to not think about the fact that many problems are here right now, and that we are exposed to massive extreme weather risk already.

“Yes, we cope with it, but we are lacking key processes and capabilities for dealing with it effectively and safely. We've got a solid winter service and a strategic stockpile of salt, but we need to be aware that the Met Office is now saying extreme weather is normal. That's a powerful message for us, because that's that we’ve been saying for years.”

A number of recommendations

The review concludes with 18 specific recommendations, many of which rely on professional bodies, highways authorities and the Department for Transport (DfT) working more closely together. The collaboration would include preventative measures and responses to extreme weather events.

Among the recommendations are: the DfT and highways authorities agreeing frameworks for councils to conduct climate change risk assessments with current risks included, a review on whether the legislation and regulations around flood water management and the safe use of highways in flood conditions are fit for purpose, improvements to local highway authority ‘step-in’ access to property adjoining highway assets, and the commissioning of a task [force] and full support for the imminent review and refresh [of] the ‘well-managed highway infrastructure’ code of practice.

“This is serious stuff,” warns Deeming. “And local authorities, faced with myriad ‘business as usual’ challenges, are really struggling to cope with it. We’ve just completed a series of regional workshops, which I think are more important than the questionnaire, to be honest. They gave us the answer we were expecting, which is that people aren't really as prepared for the future as they should be.” 

Read more on CIHT: Code of Practice 'well-managed highway infrastructure'