S30088 Delivery of the 15-Year Plan across National Highways (2026- 2029)

In May 2025, the National Highways' Board and Executive agreed the need for a 15-year Plan. The purpose of the 15-year Plan is to inform our medium-term planning across multiple Road Investment Strategies (RIS) periods for the company, delivering our 2050 vision, as outlined in Connecting the Country published May 2023, and linking long-term ambitions to business planning.

Since May 2025, the 15-year Plan has been developed with senior leaders and their teams to be launched internally alongside the RIS3 Strategic Business Plan and Delivery Plan in spring 2026. It will be further developed post launch with a greater evidence base and embedded in the RIS4 SRN Initial Report and Strategic Business Plan in spring 2027/28 and 2028/29 respectively.

It covers RIS3, RIS4 and RIS5 to 2041 and sets out our Plan to respond to our future challenges of increased demand, ageing assets, climate impacts and changing customer travel patterns. It drives National Highways to deliver differently; leveraging efficiencies, research, innovation and our partnerships to achieve the service our customers will expect. It also allows NH to plan across multiple RIS periods to drive the change required to reach our long-term ambitions.

The audience for the Plan is internal, cascading strategy down through National Highway's business planning. It will be used to inform discussions with Government and DfT on the choices and trade-offs for RIS4 looking to RIS5, building on RIS3.