Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will investigate the reasons why the roadworks on the M18 motorway were not phased to take place after the completion of the roadworks on the M1 motorway south of junction 32.

To maintain the strategic road network in a safe and serviceable condition, it is inevitable that Highways Agency road works will need to be undertaken at several locations at any one time throughout the year. Maintenance work is programmed to achieve good value for money and minimise disruption to road users. The majority of work is undertaken overnight to reduce lane closures when the motorway is busy.

In planning major road works on the M18 and the M1, the option of breaking construction into a number of smaller sequential phases was considered, however this would have had the impact of prolonging the overall duration of construction and therefore the length of time road users were disrupted.