THE WORST performing regions for accurately notifying motorists of road closures have been revealed.

Just under half (42 per cent) of motorways and major A-road closures were accurately notified in the South East in 2020-21, a new report has revealed.

The Office of Rail and Road report, titled Benchmarking National Highways, found that the South East was the worst performing region in England.

The national average was 55 per cent, while the best performing regions were the Midlands (66 per cent) and the South West (64 per cent).

The report found that the South East – the most heavily used region of the road network – also continued to suffer the highest levels of delays.

Road users in the South East already suffer the least reliable journeys and spend more time in delays due to roadworks, with an average delay of 7.9 seconds per vehicle per mile compared to 6.7 seconds nationally.

The region did exceed the national target (86 per cent) for clearing incidents, with 89 per cent cleared within less than one hour.

The report also found the South East also exceeded the target of 95 per cent of road surfaces not requiring further investigation (97 per cent).

As a result of the report, National Highways has increased the number of performance indicators the company makes public at a regional level from just five in 2019-20 to 22 in 2020-21.

Sneha Patel, Deputy Director of Highways at ORR said: “Our annual benchmarking report this year has led to greater transparency around National Highways’ performance and will incentivise its regions to improve further.

"We’ve now got a four-fold increase in the number of performance indicators that National Highways must report on: that’s a considerable step forward.

“However, there continue to be significant regional differences and we expect National Highways to apply the lessons it has learned about what works well in one region to other parts of the country as part of the steps it will take to meet all national-level targets by 2024‑25.”

The report also revealed that 31 sections of the strategic road network were above the legal air quality levels across the country in 2020-21, varying significantly by region.

There were 11 in the Midlands, none in the East of England and eight in the South East.