National Highways: M5 Traffic Management
Tuesday, 10 November 2026
Contributions
Dawn Butler (in the Chair)Labour
I will call Sir Ashley Fox to move the motion; I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and from the Minister. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)Conservative
I beg to move, That this House has considered National Highways’ traffic management policies on the M5 in Somerset. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise an issue that sits at the heart of daily life for my constituents in Bridgwater and communities across Somerset. The M5 is Somerset’s principal north-south highway. It connects communities, supports local businesses, facilitates tourism and enables the flow of goods throughout the south-west. It is indispensable. Although the M5 operates smoothly most of the time, it is suffering increased disruption. It is now closed more frequently, and those closures are for greater lengths of time. In the two and a half years in which I have represented Bridgwater, the repeated closures of the M5 have become one of the most common issues that constituents raise with me. Somerset has a unique geography that presents challenges not found in many other places. The Somerset levels contain a network of rivers and watercourses that constrain opportunities for new strategic road infrastructure. Unlike other motorway corridors, the M5 has few realistic alternatives when it becomes blocked. A closure that might be manageable somewhere else can have profound consequences. That is particularly evident between junctions 22 and 24, where, if the M5 is closed, north-south traffic is diverted to the A38, which goes from Highbridge in the north through Bridgwater to North Petherton in the south of my constituency. The A38 was never designed to accommodate motorway volumes of traffic. What begins as an instance affecting one stretch of motorway rapidly escalates into a problem affecting entire towns and villages. Traffic backs up every minor road, causing gridlock. Residents of Highbridge, Bridgwater, North Petherton and the surrounding villages know only too well what that looks like. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that this is a recurring and worsening problem. Analysis of motorway performance shows that the northbound section of the M5 between junctions 23 and 24 recorded at least one hour of traffic moving at below 30 mph on 42 days in 2023. That rose to 45 days in 2024 and 47 days in 2025. That means that, by 2025, serious congestion was occurring on one day in every eight. Equally concerning is the frequency of the closures. Data from January 2025 to August 2026 records 24 full closures of the M5 between junctions 20 and 25. In June this year alone, there were four such closures. A road of such strategic importance simply cannot sustain repeated disruption on that scale without significant economic and social consequences.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)Democratic Unionist Party
I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward the debate. He is right to refer to the strategic importance of the M5 in Somerset. My Strangford constituents and I have similar issues with the Ballynahinch bypass. Does he feel that it is time for the Minister and the Government to look at these strategic issues by constituency? That would enable him to take forward his project and solve the problems that he clearly has in his constituency.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for making that point. Later in my speech, I will come on to the point about taking a more nuanced approach across the network. Delays and diversions affect workers attempting to reach their employment, parents collecting children, businesses dependent on deliveries, patients travelling to urgent medical appointments and emergency services attempting to move across the county. I want to share a letter from my constituent Ms Halliday, who has given me permission to share her personal and distressing experience of these delays. She writes: “The last time the motorway was shut, I was stuck for 3 hours in the car. This may sound trivial but I am disabled & have health issues, including having to be close by toilets. I also have a disabled son, who is non-verbal autistic & who cannot comprehend why we are stuck in the car for long periods, and a few times he has wet himself. My daughter has also had countless late days at college over the last year or so, which is very stressful. Altogether, this has had a major effect on my stress levels & mental health over the last 2 years. As I write this email, once again the M5 is shut, causing horrendous traffic through town. My son rides the special education bus from school, and the driver has just phoned to say she has no idea when she will make it to school to collect my son. He is now stuck in school for the time being, as it would be pointless to go and collect him as I would be stuck in the same traffic & wouldn’t make it any sooner. Update, my son returned home over 2 hours late tonight.” It is because of emails such as these that I asked for this debate. Is the Minister confident that National Highways is doing everything possible to minimise disruption on the M5? Are scheduled closures being planned in the best way? Are policies in place to minimise the number of accidents? Have the Government considered variable speed limits, such as those on the M5 around Bristol? Many of my constituents have commented on the poor driving skills of some motorway users. Has the Minister any plans to monitor and improve the situation? When an accident does occur, we need to consider the harm caused to the communities affected by motorway closures. Over recent years, central reservations on many motorways have been replaced with continuous concrete safety barriers. The barriers have important safety benefits, and I am not advocating reversing that decision. However, those barriers have reduced the flexibility available to operators responding to major incidents. Traditional contraflow arrangements are often more difficult to implement than they once were. Will the Minister consider whether a more locally tailored approach is required for Somerset? One option that my constituents have asked be considered is the installation of strategically located crossover points within central reservations, with gates that can be opened by the emergency services as routine maintenance and upgrade programmes are undertaken. These crossing points would allow controlled contraflow operations during major incidents, enabling traffic to bypass closures and remain on the strategic road network rather than being diverted on to local roads. I am not pretending that such a proposal would eliminate the effects of serious incidents, nor would it remove the need to prioritise personal safety, but it would provide the highway authorities and emergency services with an additional operating tool, helping to maintain traffic flow while reducing the pressure on communities such as those in Bridgwater and North Petherton. More broadly, I urge the Government to examine whether the current traffic management policies adequately reflect local circumstances. I underline that neither I nor my constituents underestimate the challenges facing the emergency services, National Highways or those responsible for managing serious incidents. Public safety must always come first. Where collisions occur, where lives are at risk or where vulnerable individuals require assistance, every appropriate resource should be deployed. Those who work to ensure the safety of all who use our infrastructure should be commended for their work, but recognising those realities does not prevent us from asking whether the current system is striking the right balance between safety and the interests of communities that depend on the motorway. When the effects of motorway closure are so keenly felt by the community at large, there needs to be a more proportionate approach to managing people in crisis. Emergency services should balance their duties to those in crisis and to those who suffer when the motorway is closed, and their primary duty should be to reopen the motorway as soon as possible. To facilitate that, a wider review of guidance and protocol as to how the emergency services conduct intervention is necessary. My constituents are suffering gridlock caused by the increasing number of closures of the M5. I ask the Minister, on behalf of my constituents, to look carefully at the problems that we face in Somerset. Will he work with National Highways and the emergency services to minimise motorway closures and the harm that they cause to our community?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Justin Madders)Labour
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Ms Butler. I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) on securing this debate on a topic that, as he clearly explained, is a matter of particular interest to his constituents. Of course, motorway closures are a concern across the country, because we all hate it when our journeys on the motorway network are disrupted for whatever reason it might be. For most motorway users, there is nothing worse than an unexpected closure or long delays resulting from roadworks. In my constituency, I can tell within 30 seconds of leaving the house whether the motorway has been closed, or whether there has been an accident, just by the volume of traffic on our local network. Whether they are caused by an accident or roadworks, delays cause frustration and inconvenience. Whether it is speed restrictions that need to be in place for safety reasons or road closures that mean lengthy diversions, any unplanned incident can cause major delays and disruption on the network. I therefore have every sympathy with regular users of the M5 in Somerset, and indeed with those in the surrounding area, who have also been inconvenienced by a series of planned roadworks and the serious incidents to which the hon. Member referred. The experience of his constituent, Ms Halliday, brings out the human consequences of these delays. I have sympathy with her and everyone who has been affected. However, as the hon. Member said, there is a trade-off here. As our motorway network starts to show signs of age—as we all do—more work is required to make sure it remains in a good and, importantly, safe condition. That is why the road investment strategy, published in March, included an unprecedented £8.4 billion of investment in renewing many of the assets on our motorways and trunk roads over the next five years. Those assets include many bridges and tunnels, some of which are approaching the end of their design life, and features such as drainage systems and safety barriers, which play an important role in keeping the network as safe as possible. Our investment also sees a huge amount of resurfacing for smoother and safer journeys on the network, including by replacing large stretches of concrete road surfaces. That work needs to be done to ensure that we have a network fit for the future. The challenge, of course, as the hon. Member articulated, is to do it in a way that causes the least disruption for road users. He asked whether we are doing everything we can to ensure that disruption to his constituents, and indeed to all road users, is minimised. He will be interested to know that we have set targets for National Highways in the road investment strategy to reduce delays on the network, including from roadworks, and to produce an action plan setting out the steps it will take to deliver improvements. The key target we have set is for National Highways to demonstrate that it has done all it reasonably can to reduce delays on the strategic road network, as we would all hope it is doing. We would also hope that average delay performance is no worse at the end of the five-year period than it is at the start. Although that might not seem particularly ambitious, it is quite a stretching target in the context of the resurfacing and renewal projects being delivered over the next five years. We have also set a target to ensure that 97.5% of the network is free from traffic restrictions owing to roadworks, and that at least 88% of motorway incidents are cleared within one hour. We have also instructed National Highways to publish a customer and delay action plan and to deliver the actions it sets out, and to report on progress annually. We expect that to be published before the end of March next year. The Office of Rail and Road, the regulator, will hold National Highways to account for its performance in meeting those targets. In the hon. Member’s constituency, a programme of work has been under way for some time to upgrade the drainage systems and replace the safety barriers in the central reservations between junctions 22 and 24 of the M5. He mentioned the question of more flexibility on the barriers, on which I will write to him, if that is okay. I understand the point he makes, but there are other safety considerations that we have to take into account. However, I will endeavour to get him a proper response. National Highways has attempted to reduce the disruption caused by this particular programme of work by using overnight closures and lane restrictions, for example, rather than full-day motorway closures, which, as the hon. Member explained, would cause huge disruption to his constituents. There is a need for proper engagement with local stakeholders when roadworks will lead to delays and diversions. My ministerial colleagues and I have regularly raised this topic with National Highways in recent months. National Highways has learned lessons from its handling of the major Lune Gorge renewal scheme in Cumbria, where some local stakeholders feel that not enough was done to involve them in discussions about the likely impacts on them and the options to mitigate those impacts. I am determined to ensure that when National Highways undertakes major renewal programmes in future, it works with local stakeholders and agrees a plan of action. It must do all it can to ensure that the most affected have a clear understanding of when closures or restrictions will be in place. We cannot remove disruption and delay entirely, but we all want to be clear and confident that National Highways has done absolutely everything it can to minimise that. In respect of the M5, I understand that National Highways has regular dialogue with those likely to be affected by the planned roadworks. I know the hon. Member has met National Highways, which has discussed with Somerset council how best to ensure that diversions, including on the A38, are carefully planned and well signposted. There will also be works in the not-too-distant future on junction 22A, where a new gigafactory will be put in place. The hon. Member will be acutely aware that introducing a new junction to the road network at junction 22A will be quite a disruption. Work has not yet started on the new access road, but I will ask National Highways to ensure that any further disruption to users of the M5 is minimised. I am sure the hon. Member will welcome that investment in his constituency and the long-term benefits that will arise from the new junction. Decisions on when to close and safely reopen a motorway following an incident—such as attempts to take one’s own life, which I understand have been among the incidents affecting the M5—are for the emergency services to determine. That is usually the police, although it can occasionally be the fire and rescue service. The hon. Member asked whether anything can be done in terms of the protocol for those decisions. Clearly, that is outside my Department’s remit, but I commit to writing to ask the Home Office to talk to the relevant services about whether there is anything different they can do. It is important to say that when someone has been killed or seriously injured, or when responding to someone in crisis, it is really important that the police take the lead on making decisions about reopening the network. As the hon. Member would expect, when such incidents arise, National Highways works closely with the police, identifies any damage to assets and ensures that trained personnel, equipment and materials are available to undertake repairs as soon as the scene is released. National Highways regularly meets the senior roads policing officers from Avon and Somerset police to review incidents and adjust its operational approach. I understand that more meetings are planned between the police and National Highways to look at whether more can be done to reduce the impact of closures. I am grateful to the hon. Member for securing this debate. I agree that roadworks and other activities and incidents on our motorways and trunk roads need to be managed in a way that causes as little disruption as possible to road users. I encourage the hon. Member to continue to engage with National Highways on the local impacts of the closure of the M5 in Somerset. Officials from National Highways will have heard his comments today. I will reflect on what he has said this afternoon and endeavour to come back to him on some of the points he raised. Question put and agreed to.
Sitting suspended .
Source: UK Parliament Hansard API. Debate ID: 5434256.