Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether smart motorway schemes referenced the Road Investment Strategy 2: 2020 - 2025 that have not yet started main works will (a) include emergency refuge areas no more than a mile apart and (b) be built to the other new safety standards detailed in his Department's March 2020 smart motorway safety evidence stocktake and action plan.

Highways England (HE) is delivering all the actions set out in Smart Motorway Safety Evidence Stocktake and Action Plan over the RIS2 period, confirmed in HE’s Strategic Business Plan 2020-25, along with implementation dates.

The safety improvements in the 2020 Action Plan consisted of a package of 18 measures, costing £500 million, and included; committing to a new standard for spacing of places to stop in an emergency and considering a national programme to install more emergency areas on existing smart motorways; the rollout of a radar-based stopped vehicle detection (SVD) system across the All Lane Running (ALR) motorway network; faster attendance by more HE traffic officer patrols; and upgrading cameras across the ALR motorway network to enable automatic detection of Red X violations, which can then be enforced by the police.

Earlier this year, the Secretary of State asked for a first-year progress from Highways England detailing its progress in delivering the 18-point Action Plan and identifying actions that can be delivered ahead of schedule. He asked for this by 12 March 2021. Highways England has provided the Department with the report, and work is rapidly being completed to assess it so it can be published shortly, once the Secretary of State is assured that the proposals are sufficiently robust.