Road safety audit stages and who commissions each one

Road safety audit stages run from Stage 1 at preliminary design through to Stage 4 monitoring after the road has opened, and the scheme promoter commissions every one of them. That last point catches developers out. The audit is not something the highway authority does to you, it is something you pay for, on a brief the authority approves, carried out by a team that must be independent of your own designer.

On the strategic road network the governing document is National Highways standard GG 119. Local highway authorities generally apply their own procedure modelled on it, so the stage numbering and the independence rules will feel familiar wherever your scheme sits.

What each stage covers

The stages follow the design and construction sequence, and each looks at a different question.

Small schemes are often audited as a combined Stage 1 and 2 exercise, which the overseeing organisation has to agree in the brief. That saves a round of fees and about three weeks of programme, and it is worth asking for on a single access or a minor junction improvement.

Stage 3 is the one people forget. It happens on site before the road opens to traffic, and it routinely picks up things the drawings never showed: a sign obscured by a newly planted hedge, a tactile paving layout built the wrong way round, a gully in the wheel track of a cycle lane. Build it into the programme ahead of any adoption certificate.

Stage 4 relies on recorded collision data over 12 and 36 month periods after opening, which is why the note on requesting and using STATS19 collision data matters at this end of the process as well as at the assessment stage.

Who commissions it and who pays

The scheme promoter commissions the audit, and the promoter pays. For a development access built under section 278 of the Highways Act 1980, that is the developer. For an estate road offered for adoption under a section 38 agreement, again the developer, and the audit sits alongside the technical approval process described in the note on section 38 agreements and the road adoption bond.

The overseeing organisation, meaning the highway authority or National Highways, sets or approves the audit brief. The brief defines the scheme extent, the design information to be audited, the accident data to be provided and any departures from standard already agreed. A vague brief produces a vague audit, and an audit that examines the wrong extent has to be redone.

One practical rule: get the brief agreed in writing before the audit team starts. Disputes about scope after a draft report lands are slow and awkward.

Independence rules for the audit team

Independence is the whole value of the exercise. The audit team must have had no involvement in the design of the scheme, and must not be part of the design team for that project. On the strategic road network GG 119 sets out competence requirements for the team leader and the team member, including recorded road safety audit training, current experience of safety audit work and, for the team leader, experience of leading audits.

An observer may attend, commonly someone from the design team or the client, to explain the design intent and to learn. Observers do not contribute to the findings.

Two organisational patterns work. Either the promoter appoints an audit firm directly, or the highway authority nominates one from its own framework and recharges the cost. The second is more common on local authority roads and gives the authority more comfort, at the price of less control over the timetable.

Where a designer has any doubt about whether a past involvement compromises independence, raise it before appointment. An audit later found to be non-independent has no value, and the authority will ask for it again.

The designer's response and exception reports

The audit report sets out problems and recommendations, each tied to a location and a mechanism of harm. It does not redesign the scheme, and a good audit team resists the temptation to.

The designer then produces a formal response to each recommendation, which records acceptance or non-acceptance with reasons. Where a recommendation is not accepted, the project sponsor or overseeing organisation signs an exception report accepting the residual risk. That signature is the point of the whole procedure, because it puts the decision to live with a hazard in front of a named person with authority.

1. Audit team issues the report to the overseeing organisation and the promoter.
2. Designer responds to each item, accepting, accepting in part, or rejecting with reasons.
3. Disagreements are discussed, ideally in a short meeting rather than by email.
4. Exception reports are prepared for rejected recommendations and signed at the required level.
5. The audit report, the designer's response and any exception reports are kept together as the scheme record.

Keep that bundle. On adoption, on a bond release, and on any later claim, it is the evidence that the safety implications were considered.

Estate roads and private layouts

Audits are not limited to adoptable highway. Many councils now condition a road safety audit for larger private estate layouts, car park circulation and service yards, particularly where refuse vehicles, deliveries and pedestrians share space.

The useful discipline on private layouts is swept path analysis alongside the audit, because the most common audit findings there are about vehicles that cannot turn without mounting a footway. Construction phase movements raise the same issues, which is why a routing agreement with the authority, covered in the note on construction traffic routing agreements, usually goes hand in hand with the audit programme.

Cost and programme effects

Audit fees are modest against the cost of the works themselves. The programme risk is larger. Each stage needs the design information to be complete enough to audit, then a report period, then a response period, then sign-off. Two to four weeks per stage is a reasonable planning assumption on a straightforward scheme, and longer where the authority uses its own framework and has a queue.

The expensive failure is a Stage 1 audit that arrives after the planning application has been submitted and recommends a different junction form. Commission Stage 1 on the preliminary design you intend to submit, not after.

How findings reach the planning decision

Audits are a highway engineering procedure and sit outside the planning application, so audit reports are not usually validation requirements. They reach the decision indirectly. A highway authority consultee response will refer to audit findings where an audit exists, and conditions commonly require a scheme to be designed and constructed in accordance with a subsequent audit.

The transport evidence that does go into the application is the Transport Assessment or its shorter equivalent, which should describe the access arrangement and state where in the audit sequence the scheme has reached. Officers read that as a sign the highway work has been thought through.

PlanScope drafts the transport documents that accompany an application and does not produce road safety audits, which are commissioned separately from an independent audit team. Reports should be reviewed before submission, and for specialist technical reports qualified professional input may be required.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local highway authority or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.