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NOTE: This is the second part of a two-part series of blogs discussing how the recent shift in highways investment will impact your career. For the first blog, click here.
Highway capacity is a genuine barrier to development
The second shift is quieter but equally consequential. A significant proportion of large housing applications stall or fail not because of the housing itself but because the surrounding highway network cannot absorb the additional demand. Junction capacity, access arrangements, local road capacity and transport assessments regularly determine whether a strategic site progresses.
The result is that highway investment is now frequently framed as housing enabling infrastructure. The money comes from a housing budget, the outcome is measured in homes, but the work itself is highway design and construction.
The funding landscape has consolidated
Housing infrastructure funding used to be fragmented across programmes such as the Housing Infrastructure Fund. It has now been consolidated into the National Housing Delivery Fund (NHDF), administered by Homes England, which provides £5 billion of capital grant funding for infrastructure and land between 2026 and 2030 in support of the government's 1.5 million homes ambition.
The wider funding is larger still, with money coming from various different pots. Planned devolution of budget management and the advent of combined authorities having more control, meaning investment decisions are increasingly being taken regionally rather than centrally.
A meaningful share of this supports transport-related infrastructure on strategic housing sites, typically:
New or upgraded junctions
Roundabout improvements
Access roads and link routes
Local highway capacity improvements
Active travel provision and sustainable transport connections
Enabling infrastructure of this kind carries a substantial cost per home unlocked on large strategic sites, which is precisely why it needs public funding rather than being absorbed entirely by developers.
Partnership working is becoming the norm
Homes England, local authorities, the Department for Transport and National Highways are working together far more closely than they did five years ago, aligning housing delivery with the transport infrastructure that must come first. The devolution of funding to mayoral authorities accelerates this further.
For candidates, this creates a category of role that did not really exist as a distinct career path a decade ago: professionals who sit between highways, planning and housing delivery. Development infrastructure engineers, transport planners with a development background, and project managers who can navigate Section 278 and Section 38 agreements alongside planning conditions are increasingly sought after — and often difficult to find.
What this means if you work in highways
Bringing both threads together, here is how I would read the market.
Asset management and renewals experience has become a strong position to be in. Pavement engineering, structures and bridges, drainage, geotechnics, road restraint systems and roadside technology are all directly funded through to 2031. Ten years ago, renewals work was sometimes seen as less prestigious than major projects. That perception is out of date. This is where the largest and most secure programme of work now sits.
Programme readiness roles are in demand. The ORR's findings point squarely at early scheme development, design maturity and delivery assurance. If you work in project controls, planning, commercial management or programme management, the sector needs you at the front end of schemes rather than firefighting at the back end.
Quantity surveyors and commercial staff should expect sustained demand. A five-year settlement with defined outputs and an explicit efficiency challenge from the regulator means cost management is under scrutiny. Contracts need pricing, measuring and controlling, and clients want confidence that efficiency savings are real.
Site engineering opportunities are shifting in character. Resurfacing 9,000km of carriageway and reconstructing concrete roads is a huge volume of site work, but it is delivered differently from a single major scheme: shorter durations, more locations, more night and weekend working, more traffic management complexity. If you enjoy variety and are willing to be mobile, there is plenty here. If you have built your working life around one long-duration site, it is worth thinking about how you present transferable experience.
Streetworks and local authority roles benefit from the housing thread. Development-led highway works, Section 278 delivery, permit schemes and highway adoption processes all scale with housing activity. Local authority highways teams and their consultancy partners are recruiting for this.
Graduate engineers should look closely at renewals and development infrastructure. Graduate schemes tend to advertise around headline projects, but the deeper long-term pipeline right now is in asset renewal and housing-enabling infrastructure. Both offer excellent breadth early in a career: real sites, real constraints, real client interaction, and chartership evidence that is easy to demonstrate.
Regional knowledge matters more than it used to. With funding devolved to mayoral authorities and work distributed across the network rather than concentrated in a handful of schemes, employers value people who understand a specific region's clients, frameworks and stakeholders.
The bigger picture
The direction is clear. Future spending is likely to focus less on creating entirely new networks and more on making existing infrastructure work harder, safer and more efficiently. Targeted highway improvements will remain essential where they unlock housing growth, but the era of expansion for its own sake has, for now, ended.
The challenge for government is balancing the need to maintain an ageing road network against the need for infrastructure investment that continues to enable growth. The challenge for the industry is different: an £8.4 billion renewals programme is only worth what the sector can actually deliver, and the regulator has already flagged that delivery capacity is the weak point. That gap is filled by people.
Which is the honest reason I am optimistic about this market. When the constraint on a programme is money, recruitment is difficult. When the constraint is capability, skilled people have leverage.
Talk to us
At Carrington West, our highways team works with National Highways' delivery partners, tier one and tier two contractors, consultancies, local authorities and developers across the UK. We recruit permanent and contract roles across site engineering, project management, quantity surveying, design, streetworks, transport planning and highway maintenance, from graduate engineer jobs through to senior programme leadership.
If you are weighing up where the next five years of your career sit, or you are building a team to deliver against RIS3 or a housing-enabling infrastructure programme, I would be glad to talk it through.
Patrick Gray, Highways Consultant, Carrington West
Browse our latest highways and infrastructure jobs at carringtonwest.com, or get in touch with the team directly.
Sources
•Department for Transport — Road Investment Strategy 3 (RIS3): 2026 to 2031: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69c4265e471d520038d0f64a/ris3.pdf
•Department for Transport — National Highways Road Investment Strategy collection: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-highways-roads-investment-strategy
•Office of Rail and Road — Annual assessment of National Highways' performance, April 2025 to March 2026: https://www.orr.gov.uk/annual-assessment-national-highways-performance-april-2025-march-2026
•Office of Rail and Road — Annual assessments of National Highways: https://www.orr.gov.uk/monitoring-and-regulation/roads-monitoring/annual-assessment-national-highways
•New Civil Engineer — RIS3: £27bn highways budget features 30 renewal and enhancement projects: https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/ris3-27bn-highways-budget-features-30-renewal-and-enhancement-projects-and-9-in-pipeline-26-03-2026/
•New Civil Engineer — DfT details National Highways' £4.8bn interim spending settlement: https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/dft-details-national-highways-4-8bn-interim-spending-settlement-as-ris3-delayed-25-03-2025/
•Highways Magazine — £27bn RIS3 puts 'record' focus on renewals: https://www.highwaysmagazine.co.uk/news/strategic-road-network/27bn-ris-record-focus-renewals
•Construction News — Project delays blamed for National Highways renewals budget underspend: https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/civils/project-delays-blamed-for-national-highways-renewals-budget-underspend-17-07-2026/
•Homes England / MHCLG — National Housing Delivery Fund (NHDF) guidance: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-housing-delivery-fund-nhdf
•Homes England — National Housing Delivery Fund: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-housing-delivery-fund
•GOV.UK — Over 500,000 homes to be built through new National Housing Bank: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/over-500000-homes-to-be-built-through-new-national-housing-bank
•Homes England: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/homes-england