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My Lords, I am pleased to say that this draft order was considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee without any concerns raised. It relates to the key route network of the West Midlands Combined Authority, which, sadly, I will hereafter refer to as the KRN and the WMCA.
It might help noble Lords if I explain what a KRN is. It is a set of the most important locally managed roads in a strategic authority’s area. Under the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, mayors are required to designate a KRN, but most strategic authorities, including the WMCA, already have one. It allows the most important local roads to be managed in a strategic way across the whole strategic authority area.
Statutory guidance on how to decide the composition of a KRN was published by the Government in April this year, as part of wider guidance on producing local transport plans. In short, the KRN roads should be those that are the most important locally for the delivery of policies in the local transport plan. Authorities should consider things such as traffic levels, public transport use, active travel and freight movement. In mayoral strategic authorities such as the WMCA, the KRN is agreed by a resolution of the authority following a proposal by the mayor. The KRN in the WMCA area constitutes 605 kilometres of roads, accounting for 7% of the total road network and carrying 50% of its traffic.
The constituent councils of the WMCA are Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton. The WMCA is responsible for the strategic oversight, but the councils are the local highways authorities and remain responsible for the management, maintenance and safety of the roads in the KRN. The WMCA does, however, have some powers over these roads, which it shares with its constituent councils. These include powers relating to making agreements with National Highways, promoting road safety and street works permit schemes.
In addition, the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 gave all mayors of strategic authorities a power of direction over the roads in the key route network. The power of direction allows the mayor to direct the local highway authority to exercise its powers over a KRN road that it manages. The power of direction is a limited power, designed to be used only when necessary for the delivery of a measure that has been set out in at least one agreed plan or strategy of the strategic authority, such as a local transport plan.
In summary, the KRN allows for roads to be managed in a strategic way across an area. It enables improved traffic flow and reduces congestion. It also allows for the introduction of traffic management measures to improve infrastructure and bus journey times. I hope that I have set out clearly why a KRN is a useful tool. I am sure that it will have occurred to noble Lords that, due to the changing nature of travel patterns, in particular during the years following the pandemic, it would be prudent for a strategic authority such as the WMCA to keep its KRN under review and update it when it no longer reflects the most important locally managed roads.
For most strategic authorities, updating the KRN is logistically straightforward. It usually requires simply updating the list of roads on its website following a resolution of the authority. For the WMCA, however, making changes is not as straightforward because the roads in that key route network are set out in legislation, in the West Midlands Combined Authority (Functions and Amendment) Order 2017, where they are described as “combined authority roads”.
The WMCA was an early adopter of a key route network. In 2017, under the previous Government, listing the roads in the KRN in legislation provided certainty at a time when the combined authority was new and the key route network had not yet been used. Nine years have now passed and the WMCA would like to update its KRN as part of its work to publish a new local transport plan. The inflexibility of having the KRN roads set out in legislation is a barrier to this. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that a process whereby the combined authority must write to the Department for Transport to ask us to legislate every time it wants to amend its KRN is far from optimal. This is especially true when we consider that other authorities simply need to update their website to do the same thing.
After discussions with officials in my department, the combined authority has therefore written to the Secretary of State to ask that we draft and lay this instrument. This follows a public consultation in which 69% of respondents supported the proposal. Subject to its approval by Parliament, this instrument will remove the KRN roads from the 2017 order. Following this, the combined authority will be able to update its KRN roads in the same way as other strategic authorities, allowing it to respond as flexibly as possible to changing travel patterns and deliver better outcomes for road users in the area. I beg to move.