Traffex – Parkex – Cold Comfort

From Coventry to Cardiff, Blackpool to Birmingham: councils across the UK will shape every stage of this year’s programme as Traffex returns to CBS Arena on 20–21 May 2026.

The road infrastructure sector’s most practically focused event is back, and this year the people who build, maintain and manage the UK’s roads are not just in the audience. Local authority engineers, service managers, asset managers and transport directors from councils across England and Wales have helped shape the programme, taken to the podium and are driving the conversation across every theatre at Traffex, Parkex and Cold Comfort 2026, taking place 20-21 May at CBS Arena, Coventry.

Produced by Hemming Group in partnership with National Highways and supported by the Department for Transport, the 2026 edition marks a deliberate shift in how the event is built, with councils not just consulted, but firmly embedded as co-authors of the content. The result is a programme that goes further than any trade show in the sector by grounding every session, workshop and debate in the day-to-day realities of local highway delivery.

It is a positioning that sets Traffex apart. Where other events in the sector offer policy announcements and strategic vision, Traffex 2026 asks a different question: what does that mean for the team on the ground, trying to get a project approved, funded and delivered before the financial year closes?

“At Traffex, local authorities shape the programme. This year, highway engineers and service managers from councils across the country helped us build sessions around the problems they are working on right now. You won’t find that at other events in this sector, and it is why the conversations at CBS Arena tend to be the ones people carry back to the office and act on.”
Gordon Kirk, Event Director, Traffex

Government sets the context – Local authorities do the work
The programme opens with a keynote from Elliot Shaw, Chief Customer and Strategy Officer at National Highways, setting out the implications of Road Investment Strategy 3 for local network managers. He is immediately joined by Rachel Gittens, Deputy Director for Strategic Road Network at the Office of Rail and Road, for a fireside conversation on data capability and asset management maturity, a topic local authorities have been wrestling with for years.

Day two brings a ministerial address from Simon Lightwood MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Roads and Buses, before the floor is handed back to practitioners. Ruth Cadbury MP, Chair of the Transport Select Committee, chairs the afternoon’s road safety panel, bringing together the Road Safety Foundation, PACTS, and the West Midlands Road Safety Commissioner in a session designed to interrogate the gap between the Government’s road safety ambitions and what councils can actually deliver.

This interplay between national policy and local delivery runs through the entire Roadmap Theatre. Jonathan Munslow, Chair of the NHT Network, opens day two with a presentation on improving public outcomes through better data understanding, drawing on the performance benchmarking work that dozens of councils contribute to every year. From there, the programme moves through live implementation case studies: Karl Rourke from East Riding of Yorkshire Council presents on the next phase of Live Labs 2 street lighting decarbonisation alongside a colleague from Lancashire County Council; and Laura Villanueva from Transport for London leads a session on lane rental alongside Allan Pike from West Sussex County Council, examining what experience from London and the counties has taught those looking to introduce similar schemes elsewhere.

Procurement, asset management and the pressures local highways teams actually face
One of the Roadmap Theatre’s sharpest sessions will be a frank examination of procurement: what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what still gets in the way. Ian Large, Head of Service at Blackpool Council, will give a ground-level account of moving from compliance-based commissioning to outcomes-focused delivery, before joining a panel with Sean Rooney (Oxfordshire County Council), and Sam Shean (Reading Borough Council) to explore how procurement frameworks can give smaller councils the flexibility they need to work with agile suppliers and SMEs.

Asset management rounds out the Roadmap Theatre with a session timed directly around the forthcoming update to the Well-Managed Highway Code. Amanda Richards, Assistant Director of Highways and Asset Management at Surrey County Council, joins colleagues from the Welsh Government and the UK Roads Leadership Group to give a practical read on where councils stand, and what the new Code will demand of them.

Active travel also features prominently, with Katie Myles of South Gloucestershire Council presenting alongside National Highways and Coventry City Council on designing streets that the public actually trust, which remains one of the most contested areas of delivery for highway teams at present.

The TechTalks Theatre: Technology grounded in local authority practice
Traffex’s dedicated technology programme, the TechTalks Theatre – moderated throughout by Alistair Gollop of ITS Now, is built around the same principle. Darren Capes, Head of Road Infrastructure Technology at the Department for Transport, opens day one with the national technology policy context, before sessions move firmly into practitioner territory.

The day two keynote comes from Max Sugarman, Chief Executive of ITS UK, with a session examining traffic signal obsolescence and what a modern, resilient network looks like. A particular highlight across both days will be the D-TRO compliance session with AppyWay, examining how councils can turn the digital traffic regulation deadline from a burden into a strategic advantage. National Highways and the Connected Places Catapult will also present the Launchpad innovation awards, showcasing emerging technology with direct application for local network managers.

The TechTalks Theatre also features sessions grounded in council practice. Astrid Vanhove of Intouch draws on implementation experience across Europe to examine what end-to-end digital transformation of enforcement operations looks like in practice, and what UK councils can take from it as they make the shift to digital-first working. Gafoor Din, Traffic Control and Information Systems Service Manager at Warwickshire County Council, brings a local authority perspective on traffic signal infrastructure, looking at design life expectations and what that means for network managers planning ahead.

Solutions Studio: Workshops built around real delivery problems
New for 2026, the Solutions Studio delivers collaborative workshops designed around the challenges the industry is actively trying to solve. Sessions are broad and participatory, led by the sector bodies that work most closely with local authorities day-to-day.

The confirmed workshop programme includes:

• Incentivising Asset Management in Highways, led by Emily See, President of the Local Government Technical Advisers Group (LGTAG), this session brings together local highway authorities to examine what actually drives better asset management decisions at an organisational level.
• Mental Health and Suicide Prevention on the Highway Network, hosted by Blue Monkey and partner charities, this workshop addresses one of the most sensitive and under-discussed areas of highway operations, giving practitioners a space to share experience and develop a more consistent approach.
• Barriers to Delivery of the Road Safety Strategy, run by PACTS, this session moves beyond the high-level ambitions of the national strategy and examines the specific operational, political and funding barriers councils face when trying to implement road safety improvements.
• The RSTA Surgery: A Collaborative Session on Preventative Maintenance, an open-format discussion hosted by the Road Surface Treatment Association, giving local authority highway managers direct access to technical expertise on extending road surface life and managing maintenance budgets.

Cold Comfort: Winter service, climate and resilience
Cold Comfort, running across both event days in its dedicated theatre, offers one of the most practically focused winter maintenance programmes the event has delivered. A keynote from the Norwegian Public Roads Administration sets an international benchmark before the programme hands over to UK practitioners.

Ben Towse and colleagues from East Riding of Yorkshire Council present on how the authority has modernised its winter road services, whilst meteorologist-led session from Metdesk tackles how councils can better interpret forecast uncertainty when making operational decisions under pressure.

Councils including Lincolnshire County Council and Telford and Wrekin Council are presenting across both days on salting efficiency and winter communications respectively. Warwickshire County Council’s Director of Highways, Richard Fenwick, closes the programme with a collaborative session drawing on lessons the sector has only learned by doing, using live audience participation to surface practical experience from the room.

Climate adaptation runs as a consistent thread throughout, with the Climate Change Committee providing a keynote on day two that gives local authority highway teams a clear line of sight from national climate commitments to the network decisions they need to make now.

Parkex and EV Connect: Councils in the parking and mobility conversation
Parkex, the UK’s leading parking and mobility event, continues its deep connection with local authority practice. Councils including Ealing, Southwark, Brighton & Hove, Cheshire East and Coventry City Council are all presenting across the BPA Live and EV Connect programmes, covering everything from NPP implementation and high-volume permit systems to kerbside EV charging strategy, blue badge enforcement and inclusivity in parking services.

The EV Connect programme includes a keynote from Transport for Wales on delivering Wales’s EV charging strategy alongside sessions on fleet charging, coordinated kerbside management and the practical realities of policing EV bays, a growing area of operational pressure for local authority parking teams.

www.traffex.com/visit/registration
www.parkex.net
https://coldcomfort.tn-events.co.uk