National Highways launches £8bn deal to maintain England’s motorways until 2037

National Highways has launched its £8bn M&R2 procurement, setting out how maintenance, incident response and winter service could be delivered across England’s strategic road network until 2037.

The biggest road maintenance contract in England is being split into seven regional lots, with each successful supplier potentially taking responsibility for keeping a large section of the strategic road network moving.

National Highways has launched procurement for its Maintenance and Response 2 framework, known as M&R2, with an estimated value of £7.96bn excluding VAT.

The framework is intended to cover the day-to-day work that drivers rarely think about until something goes wrong: repairing defects, responding to incidents, maintaining roadside technology, dealing with severe weather and keeping signs, markings, barriers, lighting and fencing in working order.

The planned arrangement will cover more than 4,500 miles of motorways and major A roads across England’s strategic road network. The framework is expected to run from 6 January 2028 to 1 July 2037.

In brief:

• National Highways has launched procurement for its £7.96bn Maintenance and Response 2 framework.
• The proposed model is split into seven regional lots, with a single supplier potentially appointed for each.
• Work will cover cyclical and reactive maintenance, incident response, winter service, roadside technology and selected asset renewal.
• The framework is expected to run from January 2028 until July 2037.

Why the £8bn National Highways maintenance deal matters

The interesting part of M&R2 is not simply the £8bn headline. It is what sits underneath it.

A motorway network does not stay operational because someone occasionally resurfaces a carriageway. Thousands of smaller interventions happen around it every day. Signs fail. Barriers get damaged. Lighting needs attention. Grass and vegetation have to be managed. Incidents need attending. Road markings wear out. Winter weather arrives whether the maintenance programme is ready for it or not.

M&R2 is designed to bring much of that work together.

National Highways says the framework will consist of seven location-based lots, with a single supplier appointed to deliver the services in each location. Each successful supplier will also be appointed to an overarching framework, which can provide resilience across the network if a regional supplier fails.

That structure matters because it changes the scale at which maintenance is organised. Instead of looking at individual stretches of motorway as isolated jobs, the winning suppliers will be responsible for maintaining and responding across substantial geographic areas of the strategic network.

There is also a second layer to the arrangement. The overarching framework gives National Highways another route to call on suppliers if additional resilience is required.

In other words, National Highways is not simply buying road maintenance. It is building a system intended to keep maintenance capacity available when the network is under pressure.

That becomes particularly important during incidents and severe weather.

A motorway can go from routine operation to emergency response in seconds. A collision may require lanes to be closed, debris removed and damaged roadside equipment made safe. Severe weather can create flooding, fallen trees or debris across the carriageway. Snow and ice can turn winter service into a network-wide operation rather than a collection of individual roadworks.

M&R2 specifically includes incident response and severe weather operations and winter maintenance alongside routine maintenance.

That mixture is what makes the framework different from a straightforward resurfacing programme. The successful suppliers will be part of the operational machinery that keeps the network functioning when conditions are least predictable.

The scope also reaches beyond the carriageway itself.

National Highways is looking for suppliers to undertake selected asset renewal work including road markings, soft estate, lighting, road signs, road restraint systems and fencing. Roadside technology maintenance and schemes are also included.

For drivers, those assets can seem secondary to the road surface. They are not.

A damaged barrier can become a safety issue. A failed sign can create confusion. Poor markings can make a lane layout harder to read. Faulty roadside technology can affect the way operators monitor and manage the network.

The maintenance contract therefore covers many of the things that make a motorway function as a controlled transport system rather than simply a strip of tarmac.

There is a useful distinction between cyclical and reactive maintenance, too.

Cyclical work is planned. It is the regular maintenance that can be scheduled before something becomes an emergency. Reactive maintenance is what happens when an urgent problem appears and someone has to respond.

Good network management needs both.

A road authority that only reacts ends up chasing failures. An authority that only plans has a problem when a lorry hits a barrier at 2am on a Sunday.

M&R2 is effectively designed around that contradiction.

The scale of the procurement also makes it significant for the highways supply chain. Seven regional lots mean major opportunities for contractors and specialist suppliers, while the size of each package means the competition is likely to be closely watched across the sector.

The estimated framework value is £7.96bn excluding VAT, although that should not be read as £7.96bn of work already committed to suppliers. It is the estimated total value of the procurement. The figure includes the headroom built into the arrangement, while the underlying regional packages are worth less than the headline total.

That distinction matters.

The procurement is still at the tendering stage. No regional suppliers have been appointed, and the final allocation of work will come later in the process.

The current timetable points towards a framework beginning on 6 January 2028, with the arrangements running until 1 July 2037. That gives the eventual suppliers a potential relationship with National Highways lasting almost a decade.

It also explains why the procurement matters beyond the contractors bidding for it.

The companies eventually appointed will have a role in maintaining the condition, safety and resilience of roads used by millions of people and businesses. Their work will include the routine jobs drivers barely notice and the emergency responses that suddenly become the only thing that matters.

The current M&R arrangements are being replaced by this second-generation model, which is intended to provide the next phase of maintenance and response services across the strategic road network.

For National Highways, the challenge is therefore not simply finding seven companies capable of fixing roads.

It is creating a maintenance structure that can keep working on an enormous network through ordinary wear, major incidents and the sort of weather that can turn a normal morning into a national transport problem.

For contractors, the prize is obvious. For drivers, the outcome should be rather less visible.

If M&R2 works properly, that is probably how it should be.

The barrier gets repaired before anyone notices it is damaged. The winter team is out before the snow becomes a problem. The incident response arrives when the motorway has just stopped being a motorway and become an emergency scene.

The £8bn figure is the headline.

The real test will be whether, from 2028 onwards, England’s strategic road network simply keeps working.