Staff exodus risks smart motorway accidents

Highways body struggles to recruit vital employees as many leave the job over stress and safety fears

THE quango responsible for smart motorways has been accused of putting motorists’ lives at risk because of “worrying” staff shortages.

National Highways is struggling to recruit control room operators, whose job is to spot breakdowns, close lanes and send help to drivers. The Sunday Telegraph can also disclose that technology crucial to smart motorway safety was beset by problems for 48 hours last week, including a period when the system set “random” signs.

All-lane running motorways, where the hard shoulder is made a live lane to increase capacity, have been under scrutiny after a spate of deaths. Last night, MPs and campaigners called for the Government to “put an end” to the “deadly roads”.

It will put pressure on Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, to deliver on his promise to ban new smart motorways.

National Highways, formerly Highways England, has said smart motorways are “as safe or safer than” conventional motorways. The design relies on technology such as CCTV cameras and a radar system which should alert control room staff to stopped cars on all-lane running roads in 20 seconds.

Broken-down vehicles are marooned in high-speed traffic until staff find the incident on camera, set lane closures and dispatch traffic officers to the scene.

In internal emails seen by this newspaper, a National Highways manager discussed its “low staffing levels”.

The head of service delivery asked on-road traffic officers, who are patrol the network and aid broken-down vehicles, to make calls usually left to control room staff to help ease staffing issues. This, he said, would mean control room staff are able to “set signs, manage stopped vehicle detection and answer calls from the emergency services”.

It comes as whistleblowers working for National Highways claim staff have been walking out of the job over safety concerns and stress. One traffic officer, who works in the Midlands, said current staff levels were “worrying” and “dangerous”, adding: “People arrive, learn how stressful the role is and then they leave.”

The number of traffic officers – both on-road and control room operators – employed by National Highways dropped by 90 last year, from 1,628 in the year until March 2021 down to 1,538 the same period in 2022, according to the most recent annual report.

Last week, the firm suffered countrywide technical issues over a 48-hour period, including three hours and 45 minutes where there were no signs or signals available. Andrew Page-Dove, operational control director, said in an internal email that system performance had “dropped to such a level that it had rendered it unusable” and that the system was setting “random” signs because of a “missing configuration file”.

Claire Mercer, who founded Smart Motorways Kill after her husband, Jason Mercer, was killed in 2019 on a smart motorway section of the M1, said National Highways “don’t have the staff or the technology and it’s only a matter of time until there is another tragedy”.

Duncan Smith, executive director for operations at National Highways, said: “We have robust and well-rehearsed mitigation measures in place to deal with any operational challenges facing our network, including those related to technology and staffing.

“Safety remains our number one priority and an independent investigation is under way to help prevent a recurrence of last week’s system issues.”