Buckinghamshire Highways Resilient Network Plan 2025

Buckinghamshire Council’s 3,200 km of highway infrastructure is its most valuable asset, valued at £4.2bn. It provides a transport network for both commercial and private users and is critical in supporting the four key priorities of Buckinghamshire Council’s Corporate Plan (2020-2026):

• Strengthening our communities
• Protecting the vulnerable
• Improving our environment
• Increasing prosperity

Buckinghamshire Highways translates these four aims into its defined Resilient Network by prioritising sections of the highway network which connect communities, enable access to critical services, maintain safety and support the continuation of day-to-day life for residents and businesses.

This Resilient Network Plan explains how Buckinghamshire Highways develops and defines its Resilient Network and how it contributes to the Council’s wider resilience programme.

Buckinghamshire Highways is actively working to understand and manage the risks that climate change poses to its road network. With more frequent extreme weather events such as flooding, heatwaves, and storms, the council is taking a coordinated, data-driven, and community-focused approach to ensure its highways remain safe, reliable, and resilient. These changes have prompted the evolution of well-established and proven winter services to a more holistic resilient network approach, accounting for a broader range of risks.

Resilience is embedded across the council through a “One Council” approach. This means all departments work together to prepare for, respond to, and recover from incidents. Buckinghamshire Highways also works closely with external partners, including the Environment Agency, Met Office, and utility companies, through the Thames Valley Local Resilience Forum (TVLRF). Participating in the TVLRF ensures that our response to emergencies and severe weather events are coordinated with the necessary parties and provides a structured way to share information and lessons learnt, all of which improve the county’s ability to respond quickly and effectively to incidents.

Buckinghamshire Highways maintains a defined Resilient Network: a selection of key roads that are critical for keeping the county functioning during severe weather events. These roads are prioritised for operational or maintenance activities such as gritting and snow clearance to ensure they remain open and safe for use, especially during hazardous conditions.

This network includes routes that are essential for emergency services, public transport, access to hospitals, schools, and key employment areas. By focusing resilience efforts on these roads, we ensure that vital connections are maintained even when the wider network may be affected by disruption.

These areas of focus were defined to align with the four key priorities of Buckinghamshire Council’s Corporate Plan (2020-2026) and integrate with wider Asset Management and Resilience activity.

The process of developing a Resilient Network meant identifying and prioritising a number of factors essential to everyday life in Buckinghamshire. These included:

• Connectivity between major communities,
• Links to the strategic highway network,
• Connectivity across authority boundaries,
• Links to transport interchanges,
• Access to emergency facilities including Fire and Rescue, Police, Ambulance

Services and Hospitals,

• Principal public transport routes,
• Critical infrastructure such as water treatment works and power distribution sites,
• Road classification,
• Traffic flows,
• Winter maintenance routes,
• Education facilities,
• Community services,
• Council operational sites.

The identification of these factors is in line with the recommendations within the ‘UKRLG Well Managed Highway Infrastructure – A Code of Practice’ published in October 2016, as well as the recommendations within the DfT Transport Resilience Review published July 2014.

The DfT and UKRLG guidance proposes that the Resilient Network makes up a very small percentage of the overall highway network, as the larger a network is, the more thinly spread any resources must be. Due to this, the Resilient Network is analogous with our Snow Routes, which make up a smaller sub-set than the Winter Routes used for normal Winter Service.

Risk assessment is the first stage in building resilience, enabling the targeting of time and resources where they will return the greatest benefits. In developing the Resilient Network, Buckinghamshire Highways have utilised several sources of risk information, as detailed in this section, to assess what types of risks may impact the highway network and what kinds of disruption could result.

There are a number of national risk assessments which provide guidance for more localised assessments, including:

National Risk Register 2025 - GOV.UK

Transport hazard summaries - GOV.UK

UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2022 - GOV.UK

Climate change risk assessment: transport sector - GOV.UK

The Civil Contingencies Act (2004) places a legal duty on the wide range of responders. Their job is to carry out risk assessments and maintain them in a Community Risk Register. This ensures that planning and other work is carried out in proportion to the risk.

The Thames Valley Community Risk Register is a publicly available document which highlights potential hazards in our area. It has been prepared in line with statutory national guidance on emergency preparedness and we use it when considering risks to the highway network. The top community risks are:

1. Flooding
2. Severe Weather
3. Fuel Loss
4. Loss of Utilities, Essential goods and Services
5. Pandemic
6. Animal Disease
7. Environmental Pollution and Industrial Accidents
8. Major Fire
9. Cyber Crime
10. Chemical and Nuclear

The wider council recognises that climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of weather-related hazards and has therefore carried out climate change risk assessments with regards to the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2022. Buckinghamshire Highways acts in accordance with wider plans including:

• Flood risk strategies, plans and assessments, which outline the responsibilities of Buckinghamshire Highways in maintaining the drainage system, developing capital schemes to alleviate flooding, road closure and flood emergency planning and maintaining supplies of appropriate flood mitigation equipment.
• The 2025 Summer Readiness and Response Framework, which ensures a coordinated approach to summer hazards such as heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires.
• The Council Emergency Response Arrangements (CERA) and Incident Management Process (IMP), which provides the structure for an effective and coordinated tactical/operational response to a disruptive incident or emergency either externally or internally to the Council.

To better understand where the network is most vulnerable, Buckinghamshire Highways analyses data from historic severe weather events, callouts, reports, and complaints. For example, using data-driven solutions, we are identifying and mapping prominent flood hotspots across our network based upon historic flood callouts and utilising this information to develop drainage improvement plans and a prioritised register of drainage maintenance and improvements, such as clearing gullies and ditches or upgrading drainage systems.

We engaged with a wide variety of stakeholders in the development of the Resilient Network, including:

• Neighbouring highway authorities,
• Emergency services, including Buckinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service, Thames Valley Police and South Central Ambulance Service,
• Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust,
• Public transport operators,
• Utility providers.

The Resilience Service are subject matter experts in emergency management and business continuity management. Resilience Service Officers can be deployed to any emergency incident in their capacity as Tactical Advisor at a strategic, tactical or operational level as a resource to assist and support Incident Managers with their decision making.

Buckinghamshire Highways’ incident management and wider resilience activities fit into the variety of plans and procedures developed and maintained by the Resilience Service.

In partnership with Balfour Beatty Living Places (BBLP) we have introduced a state-of-the-art Operational Control Hub (OCH) to support a data-driven approach to decision-making and resilience planning. The OCH uses the latest in innovative technologies and systems to provide a single source of visibility to monitor all activities in real-time, track progress of works and enable data-driven decision making to drive further efficiencies across the network. Since its launch, we have seen an increase in productivity in our reactive works by 120%.

Buckinghamshire Highways has also significantly increased its capital investment in drainage infrastructure to strengthen the network’s resilience against flooding. One of the key actions underpinning this commitment is the cleansing of all 85,000 roadside gullies across our network, on a regular basis.

Buckinghamshire Highways understands the importance of keeping residents and road users informed during severe weather events and periods of disruption. Clear, timely updates help people stay safe and plan ahead. We share all necessary information on our responses to disruptions, road conditions, closures, and safety advice through the council website and social media channels. Residents are also encouraged to report issues such as flooding, fallen trees, or road damage using tools such as FixMyStreet or engaging through the council's various communication channels, helping the council to respond quickly and effectively.

By combining data, planning, and community engagement, the council is working to ensure that Buckinghamshire’s roads remain safe, reliable, and resilient in the face of a changing climate.

The Winter Period is from mid-October to the following mid-April, inclusive of each rolling year.

Buckinghamshire Highways’ aim is to ensure that as far as reasonably practicable the Primary (precautionary) salting network is kept free of ice, and both the Primary and Secondary networks are clear of settled snow beyond a depth of 20mm.

Weather conditions may require ice and snow clearance being prioritised across Buckinghamshire.

Prior to the start of the winter period, a pre-season meeting will be held to ensure any learning from the previous winter season is incorporated into the Winter Service Plan. On completion of each winter period and following any snow event, review meetings will be held to determine improvements which may be implemented.

Winter service information is made publicly available through the council website:

https://www.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/parking-roads-and-transport/check-to-see-which-roads-are-gritted/

Lead Local Flood Authority

There is no single organisation responsible for all flood matters in local areas, however Buckinghamshire Council is the Lead Local Flood Authority (LLFA) under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. The LLFA is responsible for the coordination of ‘local’ flood risk management and is required to work with Risk Management Authorities (RMAs) to enable effective, joined-up responses to local flooding.

It is worth noting that LLFAs are not first responders to a flood event but do lead on the management of risk from surface water, groundwater and ordinary watercourses. No single organisation has overall responsibility for operational flood response.

Buckinghamshire Council coordinates with a number of RMAs including the Environment Agency, Thames Water, Anglian Water, Buckingham and River Ouzel Internal Drainage Board, Buckinghamshire Highways and Resilience services, and riparian landowners.

The Resilient Network is not the network hierarchy used in Asset Management decision-making, but does form part of it. This ensures that understanding of the most critical sections of the network is a factor when making decisions on where and when to most effectively apply limited resources.

Our asset management strategy outlines a risk-based, data-driven coordinated way to maintaining the highway Network. The Asset Management Strategy aligns national standards and local priorities to align the Council’s strategic objectives and best practice. It emphasises maintaining a safe, resilient, and serviceable network through structured inspection regimes, lifecycle planning and carefully prioritising work. Regular safety inspections and condition surveys are carried out based on the criticality of the 5 main asset classes and this is key consideration when work programmes are devised.

This approach is set out in our Asset Management Strategy.

Our Highway Safety Inspection Policy sets out the safety inspection frequency and defect response times to mitigate safety risk on the network.

Our approach to maintenance is focused on safety, resilience, performance and value for money. Budgets are set through the council's annual Medium Term Financial planning process, and a 4-year works programmes are put together for each key asset based on the outcomes of this process. These work programmes contribute towards achieving the Asset Management objectives and demonstrate our focus on long term planning.

Candidate schemes are identified through a combination of condition data, safety inspection, Asset data (like installation date), local knowledge from operational staff, customer feedback - using the ‘FixMyStreet’ tool - and engagement with elected members. Annual works will be prioritised to ensure that schemes are carried out in locations that have the highest benefit and deliver the best value for money. For many assets multi criteria analysis of data is used to prioritise schemes considering the safety of users, network hierarchy and network resilience, amongst other things. For Local roads (Hierarchy 4b), a “Think councillor” approach is used based on community needs identified by elected local members.

Although Buckinghamshire Highways will minimise risk as far as practicably possible through investments and prioritisation, incidents may still occur, in which case Buckinghamshire Highways uses the contingency arrangements set out in the Council Emergency Response Arrangements (CERA), Incident Management Process (IMP) and Business Continuity Plans.

The Resilient Network and this plan will be reviewed every two years to ensure that the Resilient Network remains relevant and up to date, considering changes to factors defining the network and the resources or capabilities available to deliver activities. This could include construction of new roads or changes in road use, identification of new critical assets or changes to regional and corporate risks or objectives.

Lessons learnt from major events may also identify opportunities for improvement and enable understanding of the network to evolve both within the council and with our partner agencies. There are well established processes within Thames Valley Local Resilience Forum, which enable multi-agency debriefs to be held and learning to be distributed in a coordinated manner. Buckinghamshire Highways participates in these debriefs as reflects our role in incident response.

Resilient Network Map DOC 854 KB