Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate he has made of the average time taken for Highways England to provide assistance to motorists on smart motorways after vehicular failure.

Highways England monitors the performance of its management of incidents across the Strategic Road Network.

Highways England’s Traffic Officers provide assistance on the network to all motorists who require help.

Using its recorded data, Highways England has summarised in the table below the average response times for Traffic Officers to arrive on scene at incidents which have been reported to, and are being managed, by its regional control centres.

Highways England has used the same data parameters as set out in PQ answer 992.

The amount of smart motorway increased during the assessed period, due to new schemes opening.

This data provides Traffic Officer response times for breakdown incidents which are mapped to operational smart motorway locations.

The average response time (in hh:mm:ss) for breakdown incidents between 2016 and 2018 is set out in the table below.