Cut costs. Save time. Reduce carbon: Turning Live Labs 2 learning into action
Giles Perkins, Programme Director for ADEPT Live Labs 2, reflects on the publication of The Little Book of Live Labs 2 at Highways UK and what its evidence means for local highway authorities facing pressure to do more with less.
For the past three and a half years, Live Labs 2 has been asking a straightforward question: can we maintain and improve local roads differently, spending less, saving time and reducing carbon without compromising the outcomes communities need?
With the publication of The Little Book of Live Labs 2 which launched at this year’s Highways UK, we can now point to practical evidence rather than simply promising that innovation might deliver. The book brings together the results, tools and lessons from the £30 million, Department for Transport-funded programme spanning seven Live Labs, four interconnected themes and all four UK nations.
This matters because more than £4 billion is spent maintaining and improving local roads every year. Local authorities look after over 262,000 miles of roads, that’s 97% of the UK network. Even modest improvements, repeated at that scale, could make a real difference to public budgets, delivery capacity and carbon emissions.
The project delivery phase ended in March 2026. We are now focused on helping the sector adopt and scale what works, supported by a further £300,000 of DfT investment in workshops, practitioner support, collaboration and targeted engagement. More than 75 programme and project outputs can already be explored through the Live Labs 2 website and its AI query tool. Full findings will be reported to DfT in spring 2027, with longer-term monitoring continuing.
The savings are real and they are not just about carbon.
The book also highlights how different approaches are delivering benefits across the programme. North Lanarkshire’s work within the Centre of Excellence for Decarbonised Roads has demonstrated how lower-carbon materials and methods can also reduce costs and save time. Devon’s A382 project shows the value of looking beyond the price of individual materials to rethink how major schemes are designed and delivered. In Liverpool, a portfolio of 26 interventions demonstrates how smaller changes can add up to significant carbon savings. Greenprint, led by South Gloucestershire and West Sussex, has challenged another everyday assumption: that cut grass is simply waste, rather than a valuable resource.
None of these approaches requires every authority to launch a major new innovation programme. They simply ask the industry to look again at familiar decisions, use the evidence that's now available and consider whether there's a better way of doing things.
The tools are there, we need to use them
The book is not just a collection of case studies. It sets out strategic approaches authorities can use now.
The book also identifies challenges we must tackle honestly. Carbon data quality is inconsistent, product claims can be difficult to compare, and the biggest barriers are often behavioural: established processes, risk aversion and the way decisions are made. Technical solutions alone will not change business as usual.
For me, the most important message in The Little Book of Live Labs 2 is that the investment in testing has already been made. We should be making use of that evidence now.
That means bringing finance, procurement, legal and delivery colleagues together early; establishing baselines; counting time, cost, carbon and wider benefits; and adapting solutions already tested elsewhere rather than starting from scratch. It also means industry sharing robust performance data and working with authorities to challenge standards and practices that unnecessarily hold back better approaches.
The next stage is not about celebrating seven successful experiments. It is about turning their learning into everyday choices across hundreds of local highway authorities.
If we can do that, cutting costs, saving time and reducing carbon will stop being competing ambitions. They will become part of how we deliver better local roads.
Read The Little Book of Live Labs 2 and explore the evidence and tools: https://www.adeptnet.org.uk/documents/little-book-live-labs-2
