Designated Environment Fund
Case reference EIR2025/00908
Received 12 May 2025
Published 6 July 2025
Request
Please may I ask for some information about the Designated Environment Fund that was assigned to be spent in Roads Investment Period 2.
Please could you tell me how much money was in the Designated Environment Fund at the beginning of RIS 2 and how much of that has been spent by the end of RIS 2.
Please provide a breakdown of what the fund has been spent on, with enough granularity for me to be able to see how much has been spent on the installation of water quality treatment schemes at highway outfalls, as well as the amount spent on items such as landscape improvement, biodiversity improvement, flood management etc.
Response
We have ringfenced funding of £868 million for four Designated Funds across the second road investment period (RIS2), including the Environment & Wellbeing Designated Fund (E&W). There is a degree of flexibility to the way this funding is allocated to allow us to respond to the changing needs of the network, meaning there is not a fixed E&W budget.
Actual RIS2 spend for E&W Designated Fund: £422 million.
Each fund is broken down into a number of themes. The breakdown of actual spend by theme for E&W is below:
|
Theme |
RIS2 spend (£m) |
|---|---|
|
Air Quality |
32.4 |
|
Biodiversity |
93.7 |
|
Carbon |
81.5 |
|
Cultural Heritage |
16.5 |
|
Environment & Environmental Legacy |
53.0 |
|
Flooding |
15.0 |
|
Landscape |
35.6 |
|
Noise |
57.0 |
|
Water Quality |
37.2 |
|
Total |
422 |
Please note, more information can also be found in our annual reports, linked below:
Annual report and accounts 2021
Annual report and accounts 2022
Annual report and accounts 2023
Annual report and accounts 2024
We expect our Annual Report for 2025 to be published by the end of July 2025.
Documents
This is National Highways' response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.