UK National Emergency Area Retrofit Programme

2 January 2023

In January 2022, the UK Government’s response to a Parliament’s Transport Select Committee report The roll out and safety of smart motorways committed National Highways to delivering 150 additional emergency areas on All Lane Running smart motorways across the country by the end of March 2025, with construction expected to start before the end of 2022. In May 2022, the second year progress on National Highways’ delivery of the actions from the March 2020 Smart motorway evidence stocktake and action plan made the commitment that “the emergency area programme, setting out the details of the retrofit, will be available later this year. This will show where and when drivers will see the additional emergency areas.”

National Highways has listened to drivers' concerns about being able to find a safe place to stop in an emergency and have been developing a programme to roll out more emergency areas on ALR smart motorways, in operation and construction.

A newly created webpage available, which details the work on the National Emergency Area retrofit programme. This page will be updated frequently on the location and status of each area we are adding additional emergency areas.