Sloman report reflected a wider change of policy under Lee Waters - but will it survive?

The report`s ‘4x4’ chart set out the purposes and conditions for future road investment. This aimed to provide a first stage filter, of whether a scheme is justifiable and appropriate and save abortive work on inappropriate schemes that would not meet policy objectives.

Two years ago Lee Waters, the Deputy Minister for Climate Change and with responsibility for Transport policy in Wales at the time under First Minister Mark Drakeford, published the Sloman panel’s Roads Review and the Welsh Government’s response to it.

The review received widespread international attention and praise for adopting a questioning and forward thinking approach to the role of roads in transport, economic development and social and environmental policy, and offering a new framework for decision-making about both existing and new scheme proposals. It dovetailed with wider parallel changes to Welsh Transport Appraisal Guidance (WelTAG).

Some critics saw it all as part of an anti-roads agenda, but the plan did not put a stop to all road investment. Instead, it made it clear that new projects would need to contribute towards achieving modal shift, with a focus on minimising carbon emissions, not increasing road capacity or encouraging more road use and emissions through higher vehicle speeds, and not adversely affecting ecologically valuable sites. 

Since the roads review was concluded, there has been a change of leadership, and maybe focus, with a new First Minister, Eluned Morgan, and a new Minister for Transport and North Wales, Ken Skates. Back in 2023, Skates criticised the roads review for not taking local people’s opinions into account, saying: “We all want to achieve net-zero targets. But in order to do so you also have to make sure that you bring people with you. If you don’t want people to use a car you have got to provide an alternative.” 

It suggests his greater caution in challenging established thinking than Waters, who understood the difficult task of reaching net zero goals and was an advocate of not simply doing things as they have always been done. This could mean a greater focus now on considering modifications to existing projects rather than outright cancellation, as with the new A494 bridge crossing over the River Dee at Queensferry which is seen as principally a renewal and resilience scheme, on which consulation has recently ended. 

In January, Skates released a written statement promoting walking, wheeling and cycling, but in the same week, a Labour Councillor in North Wales revealed that the Minister was considering cutting the Welsh Government’s Active Travel Fund to pay for a “resilient roads” programme. This suggests that once protected funding allocated to meet the Welsh Government’s goal that 45 per cent of all journeys be made by active travel and public transport by 2041 could be diverted to fund road and pothole repairs. 

The next Senedd elections are a year away and there are some indications that whilst Welsh Labour are still committed to a sustainable transport strategy and legally-mandated net zero targets, the battle lines have been drawn over the speed of interventions and the costs to people and businesses- as with the softening on the policies for both urban speed limits, and provision of new roads.

As has been the case with the UK government- and to some extent the Scottish one too- there are signs of movement away from the green policies adopted by Drakeford and Waters in an effort to avoid being seen as ‘anti-motorist’.

It seems clear for a time at least, the honeymoon period of the radical Welsh transport policy changes personified in the Roads review may be over, and that more general considerations will be driving policy over the next twelve months.