CIHT responded to the Department for Transport (DfT)'s consultation on their resilience and adaptation plan for the upcoming years “Fit for a changing climate? Adapting the UK’s transport system”.  

In the published document DfT recognise that climate change has the potential to disrupt operations and damage the transport network. The Department sets out the objectives to ensure an accessible, safe, and reliable transport  infrastructure for the day- to-day journeys across the country: 

• The transport sector will understand the need to adapt their business and operations to the changing climate, building their response into ‘business as usual’
• The transport sector will utilise available guidance and tools to support them in prioritising investments on adaptation and sharing information to galvanise 
  adaptation action
• The Department for Transport (DfT) will set the strategic direction for the transport sector, enhancing adaptation action and fostering cross-sector collaboration. 

CIHT's response 

CIHT's welcome the publication of the strategy and see it as  the first step towards a more extensive commitment from the Department to incorporate adaptation and resilience to climate change into the objectives, operations and delivery of transport services. 

We invite the Department to reflect on the three observations below as it would be a missed opportunity if stronger actions are not taken on these points:  

• Urgency to act now: CIHT appreciate the strategy's plan to gradually integrate adaptation into transport but setting 2026 as the target for Transport Infrastructure operators to include adaptation in their objectives is too late. There is a risk of significant and expensive infrastructure losses if resilience measures are not recognised as key strategic objectives now.  
• Funding for maintenance: CIHT believe that the economic case outlined in the strategy overlooks the importance of maintaining the current transport infrastructure. CIHT call for investment in maintenance of our existing highways and infrastructure to ensure the continued and efficient use of our transport network. Incrementally adapting infrastructure and proactively maintaining it are crucial for extreme weather resilience and meeting decarbonisation goals.
• Mandatory resilience risk assessments: CIHT encourage the Department to make it a statutory requirement for all transport asset owners to carry out transport resilience assessments. This will help to identify vulnerabilities in the network, prioritise remedial action and identify who should be responsible.

CIHT offer their support to the Department to the future developments of this strategy through our work on “Resilience and adaptation to extreme weather events in the highways sector”. 

Read CIHT's full response here. 

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