By John Lamb

Published in May by the UK Roads Leadership Group (UKRLG), the Suspension of Business as Usual: Plan for Highways draft framework is currently open for sector consultation. The framework provides guidance to local highway authorities for defensible decision-making during major incidents and extreme events. 
The key message in the guidance is to ask every local highway authority to do something deceptively simple: decide in advance what you will stop doing and what you will protect when an extreme event overtakes normal service delivery.   

Response update

Every highway authority in the UK understands preset triggers. When the temperature drops to freezing, the gritters roll. Resources are pre-positioned, staff know their roles and the decision to act doesn’t wait for a phone call. That model works because winter service has been codified, trained and exercised over decades. For any other extreme weather event, no equivalent doctrine exists. 

When a major flood, prolonged storm or cascading infrastructure failure overwhelms normal operations, most authorities respond on the basis of historic experience. This is calibrated to modest events in the recent past, rather than the scale of Valencia – the Spanish city that suffered devastating floods that killed over 200 people in November 2024. 
While that scale of event has yet to strike a major UK built-up area, it’s no longer a question of whether; it’s a question of when.   

Why preparation matters

The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 requires local authorities to maintain critical functions during disruptive challenges, while Section 41 of the Highways Act 1980 imposes a non-delegable duty to maintain the highway. When the worst arrives, those two duties are in direct tension, but the UKRLG framework resolves that tension - legally, operationally and in a form that a Coroner would recognise as proportionate and defensible. 

On Boxing Day 2015, I lost six bridges in Calderdale in a single day but saved six others. The difference was pre-authorised decision-making, clear command and a team that knew exactly what the priorities were before the river rose.

Your help needed

The draft UKRLG framework covers six components: leadership and decision-making, situational awareness, network management, contractor and workforce governance, communications, and cost capture and learning. Each is structured around the questions a director or head of service must be able to answer before the event rather than during it.
In gathering evidence for the framework, more than two thousand highway practitioners across 12 national workshops told us the same things: the sector is alert to the scale of the challenge but most authorities cannot demonstrate they are genuinely prepared for their worst day. Trigger thresholds are also poorly defined, business-as-usual suspension has never been exercised, contractor arrangements assume a normal working week, and decision logs are incomplete or absent.

What we now need is for transport professionals to read the draft framework and offer us your feedback. What we want to know is: does the framework reflect your experience, does it cover the right ground and what is missing? Hosted on the UKRLG website, the framework is available for immediate local adaptation, addressing one of the most significant gaps in highway emergency management.
Help us to refine a document that will help the entire transport industry prepare for its worst day – not its average one.

• Download the UKRLG ‘Suspension of Business as Usual Highway Services’ framework draft here: https://ukrlg.ciht.org.uk/media/rfspcsru/ukrlg-suspension-of-service-plan-highways-draft-for-consultation-june-2026-final.pdf 

• Please send your feedback on the draft to John Lamb, Chair of the UK Adaptation, Biodiversity and Climate Change Board, by 30 June 2026 at john.lamb@eastriding.gov.uk 

Image title: Bridge closed due to flooding Credit: Shutterstock