I wasn’t sure if he wanted to fight me or just tell me something, but the bloke in the car behind wanted me to pull over. As far as I could see, he wasn’t as big as me, so I decided to risk it. He stopped behind me, got out, came to the window, and said one of my back wheels was damaged. Oh, good. I sat there for a while, luxuriating in despair.
Eight o’clock on a Saturday morning on the M40 northbound just past Warwick. I’d come to a stop right in front of a sign I had seen a thousand times before. It pops up after every junction on this motorway that I know so well. “M40. Maintained by UK Highways for National Highways. 0300 123 5000.” I’ve long wondered what this word (and number) salad of a sign is on about. For a start, what is the number for? It took me back to John Major’s cones hotline. As I recall, nobody was clear what that was for either.
As I needed a friend with whom to share my despair, I thought of calling it for a chat, but decided against it. Dodging fierce gusts of filthy wind generated by passing lorries, I got out to assess the damage and saw it was no more than a knackered plastic wheel rim. I yanked it off and went on my way.
But the sign remained on my mind. It looked as if it wanted motorists to understand that one government agency was looking after the road for another government agency. If I had thought about it, I could have whipped out a can of spray paint and scrawled across the bottom of it “Thanks – Good to know”.
Years of vague curiosity finally caught up with me, and I called the number. I imagined a forgotten room, in a forgotten building, with a forgotten survivor of the cones hotline years, snoozing at his workstation, waiting for the phone that never rings to ring – only for me to come along and break the silence.
Disappointingly, I got an automated multiple-choice test. Press one if you’ve broken down, two if you want to report debris, and so on. Fair enough. But if this is the number to call for these things, why doesn’t it say so on the sign? And why don’t we all know it off by heart, and have it saved in our phones? It is important to report debris, obviously, as hitting even something quite small at motorway speeds could have ghastly consequences. But you would have to be pretty lucky to spot, say, a scaffold board lying in the road and, at the same moment, look up and see the 0300 number staring at you.
As it happens, a scaffold board is exactly what I narrowly avoided on the Severn Bridge a few days later and, with the rest of the 0300 number having slipped my mind, I ended up bothering the police. My bad, perhaps. But who has that 0300 number to hand?
So, to be clear, 0300 123 5000 is the number to call, and sharing this with you is my public service. A pleasure. Except National Highways looks after motorways and “major A roads” only. So if you spot something on an A road, you will have to work out whether or not it’s a “major” A road before you decide who to call, or you lose the will to live, and just bother the police, or don’t bother making the call at all. All a bit confusing. And there was more confusion to come.
I stayed on the line long enough for a living human to materialise. I warmed to him as he was nice and friendly and had an accent a bit like mine. Apologising for taking up his time when, for all I knew, calls from stranded drivers and debris-spotters were stacking up behind me, I established that this chap worked for National Highways. But where, I asked, did UK Highways come into it? He said he wasn’t sure, but thought it was the same thing. We exchanged cheery goodbyes and that was that.
But now, like a dog worrying a bone, I couldn’t leave it alone. I remembered I had a contact for a good press person at National Highways, so I emailed her. “UK Highways Ltd,” she explained, “is a company contracted by National Highways to operate the M40 under a 30-year design, build, finance and operate (DBFO) contract. DBFO is a project delivery structure where a private company is responsible for an asset or service.”
Right. So perhaps if it had said “Ltd” after “UK Highways” on the sign, that would have been clearer. It’s a private company being paid – ultimately by us, the public – to look after roads. Fine. Whatever works, assuming it does work. I asked an accountant friend about UK Highways Ltd, and he found a note in its last accounts that said: “The company is a wholly owned subsidiary undertaking of Vercity Management Services Ltd.” And, in turn, a note in Vercity’s last accounts, explaining that its “ultimate parent undertaking and controlling party is Innisfree M&G PPP LP”. Innisfree Ltd being “a fund manager managing a number of private equity infrastructure funds”.
A number of thoughts assail me, not least that I might have been better off not asking the question in the first place. But does it have to be this complicated? For what it’s worth, until someone tells me otherwise, I’m choosing to believe that this somewhat complicated structure results in an outcome beneficial to all, namely reasonable returns for all corporate entities involved, good value for the taxpayer via National Highways, and motorways and major A roads that are kept in tolerably good nick.
A bit more clarity would be nice, too, although to get all the above information across on one motorway sign would be challenging. There’s too much to fit on a vertical sign, so we would have to have something horizontal and rather long, which you could start reading as you pass Warwick and finish by the time you approach Solihull.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
