LCRIG Content Director Alec Peachey is conducting a series of interviews with highways professionals from councils to shine a light on some of the challenges facing local highway authorities. This week, Grahame Bygrave – Director of Highways, Transport & Waste at Norfolk County Council – highlights the reasons why longer term planning is key when it comes to maintaining roads.
Q. What is the scale of the network that your authority is responsible for?
A. “Norfolk has one of the largest highway networks in the country, being responsible for 6,200 miles of road, 3,000 miles of footway and cycleway, 5,000 bridges and structures, and 53,000 street lights.”
Q. What are the biggest challenges facing you as a local authority?
A. “Significant challenges include maintaining a very varied and largely predominantly rural network, and balancing the needs of local residents, businesses and tourists. Norfolk has always been popular with tourists, but last years ‘staycation’ saw unprecedented pressure on the network, with tourists flocking to the North Norfolk coast and Norfolk Broads.
“Other key challenges include securing the necessary funding required to maintain and improve so many assets and such a large network, along with balancing the needs of all highway users at a time of immense change in terms of future customer habits. The effects of working from home and public transport use and use of active travel modes (including micromobility) post-Covid, are all current unknowns.
“Environmental issues and sourcing the resources required for all the infrastructure projects over the next five years in the East of England are also key challenges. These range from offshore windfarms, Highways England’s programme of major maintenance and improvement, Sizewell C nuclear power plant in neighbouring Suffolk, as well as Norfolk County Council’s £500m+ programme; with the £120m Gt Yarmouth Third River Crossing starting onsite earlier this year, the combined £59m Transforming Cities programme for Norwich currently under construction, and Norwich Western Link, A140 Long Stratton Bypass and the A10 West Winch Housing Access Road all undergoing development. This is an exciting time!”
Q. How has your highways team adapted to the challenges brought about by Covid-19?
A. “Norfolk was in the fortunate position of all staff having laptops and mobile devices such as tablets, well before last year, so staff could seamlessly move to remote working. Other than minor changes such as single person highway inspections and removal of face-to-face meetings, the teams have worked well over the past year. This has enabled the speedy installation of the Active Travel Tranche 1 schemes, development and start of delivery of our Transforming Cities programme, and also the delivery of work made possible due to the £22m pothole funding received by Norfolk in May 2020. We also continued with our £10m surface dressing programme as planned with works starting in April 2020.
“All the highways teams remain working remotely, delivering key services through really challenging times and the weather has certainly not been onside – over the past six months Norfolk has been hit by significant storms, widespread surface water flooding and snow!”
Q. How much importance is put on innovation within your authority and in what ways can it enable change?
A. “Norfolk puts considerable time and resources into innovation and last year we appointed a Highway Network and Digital Innovation Manager to drive this forward further. As well as making use of the full county coverage with LoRaWAN, we are using Internet of Things (IoT) devices to monitor traffic flows, temperatures for winter gritting, remote fault monitoring of traffic signals and trialling dynamic dimming on new LED street lights. The team are currently working on many more innovative solutions, such as traffic light priority for buses and interactive bus shelters, and are proud to be the first city to offer a three-tier sustainable shared transport scheme: Norwich offers bike hire, e-bike hire and e-scooter hire delivered through our partner Beryl.”
Q, In what ways do you collaborate with other authorities and the supply chain?
A. “Norfolk is an active member of both LCRIG and ADEPT and see these groups as an excellent way to share best practice and collaborate with other authorities. These groups also have excellent links with the Department for Transport, which helps ensure we are all as joined up as we can be.
“Norfolk also has long term contracts with Norse Highways, Tarmac, WSP, Dynniq and Amey, delivering the full range of highway maintenance and improvement schemes. This close collaboration has enabled us to respond to and deliver a range additional projects whenever funding is awarded.
“With an eye on the future, we also work closely with the local academic colleges and universities and we currently have around 30 highways staff undertaking apprenticeships, including level 3 and 6 in Civil Engineering.
“We are also working with a local business using Innovate UK funding to develop data insights into our highway network, including junction optimisation and highway user safety, by applying machine learning and AI to our existing network of highway CCTV.”
Q. How important is the subject of the environment and what are you doing as an authority in this area?
A. “Very important. Although Norfolk has not declared a climate emergency, the council’s environmental action plan was approved in November 2019. Since then, progress against a range of environmental measures has been good. The installation of LED street lights with our PFI partner Amey is underway with 13,000 residential upgrades just completed and a programme of 15,000 main road upgrades now starting. These two projects will see annual savings of approximately 2,600 tonnes of CO2.
“In addition, the council has a target to plant one million trees over the next four years, develop an EV charging strategy with a focus on our rural areas, and continue with ambitious plans for more bus priority and active travel schemes across the county.”
Q. In terms of funding for roads, what works well and what needs to be improved?
A. “Longer term planning is key. The current short-term funding award periods do not allow councils or the supply chain to plan resources and investment for the medium to long term. Longer term planning is a key to enable more efficient and effective planning and delivery.
“In addition, significant staff time and cost is ploughed into developing and submitting funding bids for various initiatives. These are great if you are successful and awarded funding, but not good if you are unsuccessful. The change to a more regional focus for prioritising large local major and major road network projects has been positive and has helped with our work with Department for Transport in submitting and gaining approval of project business cases.”
Q. How important is the role of LCRIG in driving change within the sector?
A. “Groups like LCRIG and ADEPT are essential for knowledge sharing between authorities, so that best practice is rolled out across authorities. They also provide key platforms for networking and sharing ideas and innovation. Although it has been nice to avoid the travel to conferences and meetings over the past year, I am looking forward to the informal conversations at those events which we all find so useful!”