Businesses big and small rely on our road network to move people, materials and goods around the country. Providing these businesses with accurate information about planned closures for roadworks is vital in our support of the UK economy. We send details of our daily road closures to over 400 freight and logistics companies, and this information can also be downloaded from our website.
Royal Mail has been a key partner, working with us to help improve roadworks information. Royal Mail handles around 16 billion letters and parcels a year; delivering to more than 30 million addresses, six days a week. For them to run their operations effectively, they need to know which roads are open. Using our overnight road closure information, Royal Mail has been able to create unique software which interprets our roadworks data and sets Royal Mail's drivers' routes.
From 2018 to now, we’ve improved the accuracy of our on-the-day road closure data by over 100%. Our target now is to make sure that our information about overnight road closures is 90% accurate seven days in advance of work starting, better helping the freight industry with their forward planning.
"We’ve seen a real change in the communications around road closures from Highways England. The daily closure report allows us to see which roads are closed around the country without having to scroll through the various websites. This has helped us to make tactical decisions on our contingency planning and inform our drivers of the advised route with a level of confidence we didn’t have before"Dennis Welton, Head of Central Postal Control, Royal Mail