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Britain has added just 65 miles of new motorway in the past decade, with a large proportion of this figure the result of a statistical quirk rather than actual construction.
The length of Britain’s motorways increased from 2,265 to 2,330 miles between 2014 and 2024, equivalent to 65 miles, according to data from the Department for Transport.
Some other European countries have built thousands of miles of new highways during the same period.
But former DfT civil servant Michael Dnes told the Financial Times that only three new stretches of motorway were opened in that period, on the A1(M) to Newcastle, the M8 near Glasgow and the M90/Queensferry Crossing.
The combined length of these sections totals 24 miles, according to Dnes’s calculations, who now works for the consultancy Stonehaven, raising a question over the whereabouts of the other 41 miles.
The discrepancy could be explained by the improved accuracy of Ordnance Survey maps, Dnes said. Great Britain’s national mapping agency can more precisely measure so-called “wiggle” in the roads, which has marginally extended the recorded length of highways.
Dnes said he was making a serious point that the progress in building motorways in Britain was so sluggish that it could be “swamped by literal rounding errors”.
New motorways are often controversial with environmentalists because of their impact on climate change and on local biodiversity. Yet many drivers are frustrated with Britain’s often-congested roads.
The statistics will raise questions over why the UK has been so slow to build motorways in recent decades, with just 422 miles added since 1990.
In the same 35-year period, Spain has built 6,917 miles, France 3,057 miles, Germany 1,440 miles, Turkey 2,082 miles and Poland 1,545 miles, according to data from the EU.
One DFT official said Britain had not built much motorway in recent years because successive governments had “prioritised enhancements to the existing motorway network”.
Another official said the UK’s motorway system was more “mature” than other much larger European countries, having grown rapidly in the 1950s and 60s and therefore less in need of expansion.
Edmund King, president of the AA motoring organisation, said successive governments had backed “smart” motorways “to the detriment of actually improving the network”.
Smart motorways are sections of road where traffic flow is managed by adjusting speed limits. They are meant to increase capacity by utilising the hard shoulder as a running lane.
But King said that, in practice, “they don’t work as one-third of drivers don’t use the inside lane” for fear of broken vehicles ahead.
He added sudden lane closures could cause more congestion than on a regular highway, where the hard shoulder is available, noting £900mn has been spent upgrading “badly designed” systems.
Despite the government’s pledge to deliver a “record level of spending on fixing the road network” in the Budget, investment in building roads is expected to fall in the coming year by 5 per cent on the current allocation.
Noble Francis, economics director at the Construction Products Association, said: “Anyone who travels on the roads in the UK knows that we need improvements in both the quality of existing roads and new, additional roads to make travelling easier and quicker.”
Asphalt sales volumes have declined in five of the past six years and are now at their lowest in a decade, according to the Mineral Products Association, which represents the heavy materials industry.
Aurelie Delannoy, MPA director of economic affairs, said asphalt producers continue to face “investment strategies beset by delays, cancellations and a shrinking pipeline of new work — alongside worsening budget pressures on local authorities impacting road maintenance”.
