Road safety audit independence and team competence

A road safety audit is worth nothing if the people doing it have any stake in the design. That is the whole premise of the discipline, and it is the requirement most often bent on developer-funded highway works, usually by accident rather than design. The audit team has to be independent of the design team, the standard sets minimum competence for each team role, and the highway authority rather than the developer controls the appointment.

Audits on the strategic road network and on most local authority schemes follow GG 119 in the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges. Local highway authorities adopt it with local amendments, and some apply it to every section 278 agreement regardless of scale, so check the authority's own road safety audit policy before you programme anything.

What an audit is, and what it is not

An audit identifies road safety problems arising from a highway scheme and recommends measures to address them. It produces a report listing problems and recommendations, each tied to a location and a description of the collision type it could generate.

Four things it is not.

It is not a check on compliance with design standards. Standards compliance is handled through the design organisation's own checks and the departures from standard process, and an audit that spends its pages on standards has misunderstood its brief.

It is not a design exercise. The audit team identifies problems and recommends; it does not redesign the junction. Where a recommendation implies a design change, working out how to deliver it is the designer's job.

It is not an economic appraisal. Cost and deliverability are matters for the designer and the authority to weigh in response.

And it is not part of the planning application. This is the point developers get wrong most often. An audit sits inside the technical approval process for works in the highway, not inside the transport evidence base that supports the planning case. A Transport Assessment addresses the development's traffic effects for the planning decision; the audit addresses the safety of the highway works for the authority that will adopt and maintain them.

The stages

Stages 1 and 2 can be combined on smaller schemes where preliminary and detailed design run together, which is common on a single access. The authority decides whether combination is acceptable, and it should be asked rather than assumed.

Stage 3 is the one that delays openings. It needs the scheme complete, which means the signs installed, the lines laid and the lighting working, and where the audit raises problems at that point the remedial work sits between you and the opening of the access. Build float into the programme for it rather than assuming a clean audit.

Independence: the rule and the traps

The audit team must be independent of the design team and must not have been involved in the design of the scheme at any stage. That is the rule. The traps are more specific.

Using a different office of the same consultancy that produced the design. Some authorities accept this with documented separation and some do not, and assuming the former is how a report gets rejected after it has been paid for.

Using an auditor who gave informal advice during design development. A conversation about whether a radius would work is involvement, even without an invoice.

Appointing an auditor who later picks up the design of a subsequent phase. This compromises the earlier audit retrospectively in the eyes of some authorities.

Using the same team for the audit and for the designer's response. These are opposite sides of a documented exchange and cannot be the same people.

And pressing the audit team on findings. The audit is a professional judgement recorded in writing, and attempting to negotiate the problems out of the report is both improper and visible, because the report carries the team's names.

Which is the practical reason every audit report should carry its authors, their roles and the date, in the same way that any technical document relied on in a consent process should have a named author and date.

Team competence

GG 119 sets out roles and minimum experience. The structure is consistent even where the figures are revised.

An audit team leader, who must have substantial experience in road safety engineering, including experience of conducting audits, and who must have completed recognised road safety audit training. The leader signs the report and carries responsibility for it.

An audit team member, with a lesser but still defined minimum experience requirement and the same training expectation. Audits are carried out by at least two people, which is deliberate: a single auditor's blind spots go unchallenged.

An observer may join for training purposes, and their presence must be recorded. Observers do not substitute for a qualified team member.

The current minimum periods are set in the standard and have been revised, so read GG 119 itself rather than relying on a figure from a previous project. Where the works are on the strategic road network, National Highways may apply additional requirements, and a few local authorities maintain their own approved auditor lists.

What a certificate cannot tell you is whether the team has audited this type of scheme before. A team experienced in rural junction improvements may be less fluent in a constrained urban access with high pedestrian flows, and asking for relevant scheme examples is a reasonable question to put before appointment.

The designer's response and exception reports

For each problem and recommendation, the design organisation responds in writing: accepted and how it will be addressed, or not accepted with reasons. The exchange is recorded and forms part of the approval record.

Where a recommendation is not accepted, the standard requires the position to be documented and signed off at the appropriate level within the overseeing organisation. That is a decision with a name attached to it, which is the point of the process. An authority taking the risk of declining a safety recommendation does so on the record.

Two practical consequences. Respond to every item, including the ones you consider minor, because an unanswered item will come back. And keep the response factual rather than argumentative, since the file will be read later if anything goes wrong.

Where the design consultant changes part-way through, the audit and response record has to transfer intact. Losing the trail is more damaging here than almost anywhere else, and the same discipline applies as when changing consultant mid-application without losing evidence.

Who appoints and who pays

On developer-funded works the developer pays and the highway authority appoints or approves the audit team. That asymmetry is intentional, and arguing about it rarely helps.

Ask the authority three questions early. Does it maintain an approved auditor list or will it accept a team you propose. Will it accept combined stage 1 and 2 audits on this scheme. And what is its current fee basis for reviewing the audit and the designer's response.

Budget the audit alongside the technical approval fees, the surety bond and the supervision charges rather than as part of the design fee. On a modest access the audit is a small line. On a signalised junction with pedestrian facilities it is not, and the stage 3 remedial allowance is the part most often omitted.

Where construction traffic is also a concern, the authority will usually deal with it separately by planning condition through a Construction Traffic Management Plan, which is a planning document rather than part of the audit process.

A road safety audit is not one of PlanScope's report types, and it needs an independent, competent audit team appointed under the authority's process. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required. This is general guidance, not legal advice, so check the position with your highway authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

PlanScope drafts the transport documents that support the planning application itself, and drafts can be sent for sign-off through the professional directory. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.