Richmond Council appointed Metis to support the development of strategic highway investment planning, providing the evidence needed to understand long-term maintenance pressures and make the case for increased capital funding.

Richmond’s highway network includes around 380km of carriageways and 700km of footways. These support everyday movement across the borough and help to deliver wider priorities around safer streets, greener travel, thriving town centres and high-quality public realm. However, like many local authorities, the Council was facing growing pressure on its highway investment planning from long-term funding constraints, rising construction costs, and an ageing asset base incurring changing demands.

The challenge

Richmond’s planned maintenance budget for carriageways and footways was £2.7 million in 2023/24. This level of funding was no longer sufficient to prevent network deterioration, particularly following significant inflation in highway maintenance costs and reduced external funding for principal road maintenance (i.e. the busiest roads).

Richmond needed a clear, evidence-based understanding of the scale of the backlog, the level of annual investment required to prevent further decline, and the impact that different funding scenarios would have on network condition over time. The Council also wanted to understand what additional funding could realistically achieve. This was in order to move from network decline towards a more proactive, targeted highways investment strategy.

Creating a dynamic investment model

Metis’s highway investment planning forecasts how Richmond’s carriageway and footway assets would perform over a 10-year period under different levels of investment. The model used condition data, maintenance budgets, term contract rates, lifecycle assumptions and engineering judgement agreed with Council officers to assess the relationship between asset deterioration and planned maintenance activity.

We created a tailored model to account for different types of road, based on their usage and functionality. This model also incorporated data on differences in deterioration and maintenance. We used this model to build a suite of scenarios that would allow officers to assess trade-offs. This in turn equipped them to devise a targeted strategy across the entire highway network.

Four investment scenarios were modelled:

• Continuing at the current £2.7 million annual budget
• Funding the network at steady state to prevent further deterioration
• Slightly increasing investment to slowly improve service levels
• Clearing the maintenance backlog to ambitious target levels over 10 years

The modelling showed that if Richmond continued at the current funding level, the total maintenance backlog would be expected to double by 2034. As such, there was a clear need to develop a business case for additional maintenance funding.

Creating a business case

Alongside the modelling, Metis produced a clear and visual strategic business case. This translated complex asset management data into an accessible narrative for senior leaders, elected members and non-technical stakeholders. The plan linked highway investment to Richmond’s wider corporate priorities, including:

• safer streets
• active travel
• economic vitality
• town centre quality
• resident satisfaction

Benchmarking was also used to strengthen the case for investment. Pan-London principal road condition data showed Richmond had one of the largest principal road maintenance backlogs in London.

Outcome and value delivered

Metis provided Richmond with a robust, transparent evidence base to support long-term highways investment decisions. This earned Richmond an annual funding increase from £2.7m to between £7m and £9m a year.

The work gave the Council:

• a quantified understanding of its highway maintenance backlog
• clear forecasts showing how network condition would change under different investment scenarios
• identification of the annual steady state funding requirement
• evidence of the investment needed to reduce the backlog and improve service levels
• a concise, visual business case suitable for technical and non-technical audiences
• a stronger basis for discussing future capital investment requirements with senior decision makers

By combining technical modelling with clear strategic communication, Metis helped Richmond understand the long-term implications of different funding choices and make an evidence-led case for more proactive highways investment.

The project demonstrates Metis’s ability to support local authorities with strategic asset management, highways investment planning and business case development – turning complex infrastructure data into clear, actionable insight.

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