Reform UK’s Kent Highways Contract: KCC’s “£50m-a-Year” Ringway Deal vs the Official £2bn Price Tag — Is It Value for Money?

Updated: 9 Dec @ 09:20

Reform-led Kent County Council announced on 19 November 2025 that Ringway will take over its core highways maintenance contract from May 2026, promoting it as a “21-year” deal worth “around £50 million a year” — or “just over £1bn” across the partnership’s lifespan.

Reform UK Cllr Peter Osborne (pictured below 2nd from left), KCC’s Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport, said the contract is “designed to be efficient, transparent, and focused on providing visible results that Kent’s residents will see.”

Ringway may present itself as a UK highways contractor, but its ownership is international. VINCI’s own group disclosures place Ringway inside Eurovia, which sits within the wider VINCI conglomerate. VINCI’s published corporate address is in Nanterre, France, and its latest “list of controlled companies” shows Ringway Infrastructure Services Ltd as a 100%-controlled entity within the group. Companies House likewise lists Vinci Construction Holding Limited as the controlling party for Ringway Infrastructure Services Limited.

But the formal UK procurement paperwork tells a starker story about the money. The contract award notice records the total value of the procurement (excluding VAT) as £2,000,000,000 (£2bn). This is not a back-of-the-envelope estimate or a trade press flourish: it is the value stated in the official award notice itself.

So the question for taxpayers is unavoidable: how does a deal presented publicly as roughly “£50m a year” translate into a £2bn contract envelope — and on what basis can that gap be defended as “value for money”?

The old contract: Enterprise/Amey (2011 to April 2026)

KCC’s current Highways Term Maintenance Contract began on 1 September 2011, originally awarded to Enterprise AOL (later acquired by Amey), and — crucially — KCC acknowledges it has not been “commercially re-tendered” since that original award.

KCC’s own decision records describe the arrangement as worth between £40m and £50m per year (depending on funding lines and programme mix). 

The contract then became a rolling exercise in extension management:

• In 2018, Amey announced a two-year extension “until 2020” worth over £35m per annum. 

• In August 2020, KCC formally approved a 20-month extension with Amey until 30 April 2023, explicitly citing Covid-19 disruption to re-procurement. 

• In August 2023, KCC approved an interim 32-month contract with Amey while it pursued a longer replacement. KCC’s report states this interim deal commenced 1 September 2023 and will end 30 April 2026, and that it “cannot be extended any further.” 

Alongside KCC’s own papers, the wider market repeatedly framed the expiring arrangement as a “£500m” highways services contract, with re-procurement delayed by pandemic uncertainty. 

The new contract: Ringway (from May 2026)

KCC’s public messaging is straightforward: from 1 May 2026, Ringway will run a “21-year” contract worth around £50m a year, covering gritting, potholes, bridges and 24/7 response — and KCC claims “better value for money” via “transparent pricing”. 

However, the contract award notice sets out the legal-commercial reality:

• The contract was concluded as of 19 November 2025 (to allow mobilisation before the May 2026 go-live). 

• The initial term is 14 years, with an option to extend by up to 7 more years — meaning the “21 years” is the maximum, not the guaranteed minimum.

• The total value (excluding VAT) is £2bn, and the notice repeats this as both the estimated and final award value. 

And the notice explains why it is so high: the £2bn estimate is said to reflect (i) recent/current annual spend of circa £50–60m, (ii) a maximum 21-year term, (iii) inflation impacts, and (iv) the ability for KCC — and potentially other listed local authorities — to route projects through the contract, plus scope for additional related services over time. 

Inflation doesn’t make the £2bn question go away — it sharpens it

If the debate is “inflation explains everything”, the national statistics do not support complacency.

Between September 2011 (the early period of the original arrangement) and October 2025 (the month the contract award was published), ONS indices show:

• CPI rose from 94.4 to 139.8 — about 48% inflation on that measure. 

• RPI rose from 237.9 to 407.4 — about 71% on that measure. 

So yes: a “£500m” contract in 2011-era money is not a “£500m” contract today. On CPI it is roughly £740m in Oct-2025 prices; on RPI it is roughly £856m. (Those conversions are arithmetic using the ONS indices above.) 

But here’s the problem: KCC is not merely signing a contract that keeps pace with inflation. It is signing a procurement whose published ceiling is £2bn. Spread across the maximum 21 years, that implies an average of about £95m per year (excluding VAT) — nearly double the “circa £50–60m” annual spend the award notice itself cites as the baseline. 

That gap matters because it is where “value for money” can quietly die: not in the day-one press release, but in the headroom — the built-in capacity for rising rates, widening scope, extra call-offs and “supporting services” that can turn a maintenance contract into an open-ended spending pipeline. 

Why the £2bn figure looks hard to defend as “value for money”

KCC says the new contract will bring “transparent pricing” and “better value for money”. Yet the public is simultaneously told “£50m a year” while the legally operative award notice locks in a £2bn procurement envelope, explicitly designed to accommodate inflation, extra projects and scope expansion. 

A rigorous value-for-money case would normally require the council to publish (at minimum) the pricing/indexation mechanism, the schedule of rates structure, and the performance regime that supposedly restrains cost growth — especially when the award notice itself flags a performance regime capable of adjusting the term, and reserves the right to add services. 

Until that evidence is made public, KCC is effectively asking residents to accept that a contract marketed as ~£1bn is compatible with a £2bn procurement value — and to take it on trust that the difference represents prudence, not a licence for overspend.

That is not “transparent pricing”. It is transparent risk — with the bill, ultimately, landing where it always does: on the taxpayer. 

If you have a story we should be looking at please do contact us at: TheShepwayVoxTeam@proton.me – Always Discreet, Alway Confidential

The Shepway Vox Team

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