A spokesperson for Amey said the repair work it carried out was different both in scope and in time from that considered by the government-appointed quantity surveyor. “Amey rigorously ensures that it always provides value for money maintaining the highway network to a high safety standard,” they added.
Claims made by National Highways or local authorities to recover the costs of repair work following an accident involving a third party are called green claims. In the year to March 2021, National Highways recovered £15.5 million in green claims from third parties. Critics accuse contractors working for National Highways and its predecessors of inflating the value of many such claims. It’s a practice that they allege has been going on for years.
During a House of Lords debate in 2017, the Earl of Lytton, a chartered surveyor, said overcharging was commonplace.
“Highways England’s contractors are apparently not averse to submitting inflated green claims for highway infrastructure damage caused during motor accidents,” he said. “These increase insurance costs and appear to [exceed] the contractual arrangements with Highways England, and yet nothing seems to be done about them.”
In the same year, CMA estimated that green claims had been inflated by a total of £10m over the previous three years. At the time, it had just won a court ruling against Kier Highways, a contractor, that it accused of submitting a higher claim for costs to its insurer client than it would normally have charged Highways England, including £70 an hour for “asset incident watchmen” rather than the £25 it charged Highways England for the same service.
