Ditched smart motorways cost more than £60m

THE Government wasted more than £60 million on smart motorway schemes that have now been scrapped, figures show.

Richard Holden, a roads minister, said £62million was spent on the planning and design of 14 smart motorways projects that were scrapped by Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, last month.

The figures, which were revealed in a response to a parliamentary question by Louise Haigh, Labour’s transport secretary, showed more than £5million was spent on designing the schemes last year despite the Government announcing a pause on their rollout in January 2022 because of safety concerns.

Smart motorways, introduced in the UK in 2006, replaced some hard shoulders with an extra lane of traffic in an

‘Ministers should have listened to Labour years ago and paused the smart motorway rollout’

effort to reduce congestion. There have been concerns about safety, with at least 38 people killed on these stretches of roads. Last month, Mr Sunak announced plans to scrap the 14 schemes set to be delivered before 2030, owing to the public losing confidence in the schemes.

Ms Haigh said she was dismayed the Government had wasted tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer money on projects that it knew were unsafe and unwanted. She said: “Ministers should have listened to Labour years ago and paused the smart motorway rollout.”

A Department for Transport spokesman said: “We’re investing £900million to add safety improvements to those in place so that people can get around easily with increased confidence.”

A National Highways spokesman said that since the schemes were paused, it had been “delivering safety improvements on motorways”.