The independent report by Sarah Simpson, recently referred to in the press and legal action is here
The experts report has been finished after a year of work. The sole purpose of commissioning this independent report was as follows:
You must file a judicial review within 3 months of a decision or action, obviously smart motorways have been in longer than 3 months. So Irwin Mitchell needed a new ‘decision’ from Highways England on which to hinged a judicial review on. Hence the report.
The report how now been sent to Highways England with evidence based observations and recommendations. i.e. we need the hard shoulder back. and a Pre Letter before Action, to confirm we will start legal proceeding.
Highways England can now choose to accept and adopt the reports recommendations, which would be great as we would get the hard shoulder back quicker. Or they can reject it, if they do reject it that is the ‘decision’ we need to file in court for a Judicial Review to get smart motorways banned in law.
Its taken over 18 months to get to this point, but I’m sure I can see the hard shoulder on the horizon!
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Claire, thank you so much for doing this. I had a really frightening experience on a smart motorway. All (inc kids) in the car were okay, but it was bloody terrifying and only dumb luck that saved us. I’ve written to MP Gill Furniss about it. I can send you through details of the incident which help. Good luck with the campaign, big supporter here.
Hi Sally, Thank you for your comment, your experience sounds terrifying, I’m glad you were physically unharmed. Please do email details through to info@smartmotorwayskill.co.uk
Its utter madness removing the hard shoulder I don’t know how it got signed off.
We won’t stop fighting till we get the hard shoulder back
Thanks Again
We had a terrifyingly experience on the M40, not a ‘smart motorway’ but it made me realise how lucky we were that it was not. We were driving along the M40 on a Sunday afternoon in very heavy traffic and torrential rain In the outside lane when the windscreen wipers packed up. I had a minute perhaps before my visibility would be zero and just managed to get to the hard shoulder. I dread to think what would have happened had we been on a smart motorway as the rain was so heavy as was the traffic, that I’m certain there would have been terrible pile up as visibility was minimal and traffic would,have piled into us long before the breakdown would have been picked up by the so-called safety cameras. Anyway there would have been nowhere to go.