Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of National Highway’s ability to ensure that important signage is legible and free from graffiti.

Answered by Justin Madders - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The Department monitors National Highways’ performance through established sponsorship and reporting arrangements, including its approach to safety-critical asset defects on the strategic road network. Through these arrangements, the Department is confident that National Highways has appropriate processes in place to identify and address graffiti where it affects the legibility of important signage.

National Highways manages graffiti through its routine maintenance programme, in line with the Asset Delivery Asset Maintenance Requirements. Its traffic officers patrol the motorway network 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and identify and report urgent or safety-critical asset defects, including graffiti that obscures or renders road signage illegible.

National Highways also identifies graffiti through regular safety inspections, with frequencies determined on a risk basis. These are generally carried out every seven days on the motorway network and up to every 28 days on lower-volume trunk roads. Graffiti that is likely to cause offence, or which makes signage illegible, is treated as a priority and is often addressed within 24 hours.