Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the cost was to the Highways Agency of collecting litter from the verges and central reservations of (a) motorways and (b) trunk roads in England in each of the last three years for which information is available.

The Highways Agency is responsible for picking litter on England’s motorways and a small proportion of the all-purpose trunk road network. Local authorities are responsible for picking litter on the rest of the road network.

The Highways Agency’s maintenance contracts are structured so that managing agents are paid a ‘lump sum’ for a wide range of general maintenance duties. These include sweeping, cleaning and litter clearance duties. The Agency does not disaggregate its budget and spend on these types of activities - and exact litter clearance costs cannot be extracted as the activity is performed on both a routine and ad-hoc basis to meet contractual requirements and the legal requirements under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. However, mindful of this question and my own determination to see standards improve on our Strategic Road Network wherever possible, I intend to raise this matter with the Highways Agency. I want to understand better what further steps might be taken to make it easier to monitor the performance of Highways Agency contractors on environmental matters.