Highways Doughnut Toolkit

The Highways Doughnut toolkit - assessing roads for people and planet

Roads connect people to work, school, healthcare, and nature. They are also among the most resource-intensive and ecologically disruptive infrastructures we have built. Pollution from road transport affects 94% of land in Great Britain, and 80% of the country lies within one kilometre of a road. Yet conventional performance metrics focus almost entirely on cost and speed of delivery. Environmental and social impacts remain largely invisible in the way the sector measures success.

The Highways Doughnut Toolkit changes that. Developed by Circle Economy and Colas in partnership with highway authorities in Somerset, Cornwall, and Hampshire as part of ADEPT Live Labs 2, the toolkit translates Doughnut Economics into the language and realities of the UK highways sector. 

The toolkit is structured around 18 themes capturing both the social foundation of the sector and ecological ceiling, see image below. For each theme, a defined Doughnut State is developed, defining the ideal future state for each topic. 

Two tools, one framework

The framework consists of two interrelated tools that target different operational levels:

The Strategic Tool evaluates plans, strategies, and contracts within highway authorities, assessing how well long-term ambitions for social and ecological value are embedded at the organisational level.

The Project Tool is applied to specific roadworks and maintenance schemes, translating strategic goals into operational delivery and ensuring each project contributes positively to the defined Doughnut States.

The Highways Doughnut Toolkit comes with three components:

1. A scoring spreadsheet where teams can score each Highways Doughnut theme, justify the score, and identify mitigation measures. The spreadsheet then invites a re-score and re-justification based on those mitigations. Doughnut visuals are generated automatically, showing both a Baseline Doughnut (current state) and a Mitigation Doughnut (potential improved state) making trade-offs clear and communicable at a glance. 

2. Workshop canvases are developed for each theme, designed to be filled in collaboratively during facilitated workshop sessions with experts such as engineers, procurement officers, social value leads, ecologists, contractors, and suppliers.

3. Implementation guidelines help teams navigate the toolkit, structure their workshops, and get the most out of the process.

The values of the tool

Local highways are under increasing pressure: tight budgets, rising expectations, and the urgent need to cut emissions and protect nature. The Highways Doughnut Toolkit helps authorities respond by making decision-making practical, measurable, and collaborative.

It provides a shared framework that:

• Brings teams together across authorities, contractors, and suppliers.
• Streamlines assessments across projects and strategies with shared language and indicators.
• Balances people and planet by showing trade-offs and preventing progress in one area from undermining another.
• Clarifies decisions through clear, visual summaries of expected impacts.
• Tracks progress by enabling authorities to revisit and update assessments over time.

Results from the field

The toolkit has already been tested in workshops and real-world settings at both strategic and project levels in Cornwall, Hampshire, and Somerset, demonstrating its potential and practicality.

• Winter Service Plan review in Somerset: The Strategic Tool highlighted opportunities to optimise the routes where the Winter Service would take place while maintaining equitable access to rural and urban areas.
• Contract evaluation in Cornwall: The Strategic Tool exposed alignments and gaps in the contracts between the county council and their contractor, especially around monitoring and translation of targets into systematic implementation measures. This helped Cornwall align their contractor performance more closely with the ecological and social objectives of the council.
• Resurfacing project evaluation workshop in Hampshire: The Project Tool encouraged broader collaboration between highway authorities and contractors, integrating technical, environmental, and social considerations to identify strengths, gaps, and potential mitigation measures.

Across these pilots, authorities reported improved clarity in decision-making, stronger cross-team collaboration, and greater confidence in balancing ecological integrity with social needs.

Want to get started? 

The Highways Doughnut Toolkit is freely available for any authority, contractor, or partner to use.

Download the toolkit here. 

For training and trial programmes, contact Circle Economy at info@circle-economy.com