Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, on how many occasions gantry notification systems on smart motorways were inoperable as a result of technical failure in the last 12 months.

Highways England currently holds data to reflect the percentage of time that roadside technology is operable rather than the number of occasions that a device is offline.

Highways England assesses that, using the time period of April 1^st, 2020 through to March 31st, 2021, that all of the relevant technology for Smart Motorways are operable for 99.38% of the time nationally, whilst, this operable figure for the Yorkshire North East region is 99.41% of the time.

There are maintenance standards to do with the service restoration time for the various devices associated with roadside technology (including those associated with smart motorways) that work to ensure the operability is maintained. There are factors such as accessing the roadside in a safe manner, that could impact restoration times.