Transport Insights

Update: National Highways has told me that the DfT is sitting on a total of 14 reports. Of these, nine are five years after and five are one year after.

National Highways has said it will publish the reports on smart motorway performance that the Department for Transport (DfT) has been suppressing for nearly three years once ministers have decided how to spin the “complicated” data.

As I have reported, ministers called in the Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) reports, at least nine of which were due to be completed by National Highways in 2022, and have not allowed the government-owned company so publish them, supposedly while it carries out “assurance”.

The reports could show that individual smart motorway schemes are failing on issues such as safety, the environment and their impact on the economy.

I asked both National Highways and the DfT to disclose the reports under the Freedom of Information Act but the company has refused under section 22 (1), claiming that it had agreed “a clear route” to publication with the DfT.

Among other “public interest” reasons for withholding the data it said:

We have agreed an approximate date for release by DfT pre Christmas 2025 (subject to DfT agreeing the comms handling plan.

Publication will take place once other specified actions have taken place including briefing of ministers, agreement on a comms plan and final quality assurance.

It explained that the POPE are “complicated” and that it is in the public interest “that the communication of the results is led by the DfT”.

Significantly, National Highways added that the safety sections “include further analysis of data that is already in the public domain, and which has been reported on by NH in its annual stocktake and safety reports”.

Unable to resist spinning the findings even in a supposedly objective balancing exercise, National Highways added:

The POPE reports support the conclusion already drawn that Smart Motorways are amongst the country’s safest roads.

This is clearly the DfT’s concern – National Highways can amalgamate data to disguise the fact that individual schemes are less safe than they want to admit but POPE reports are at a scheme level.