Operation Brock
Case reference FOI2024/00660
Received 27 July 2024
Published 16 May 2025
Last amended 16 May 2025
Request
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How many times has Operation Brock been activated in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019?
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How much is the total cost of activating and de-activating Operation Brock during each of the calendar years listed above?
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What is the longest continuous period of time Operation Brock was implemented for and how many days was it in place before de-activation?
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If this information has already recently been published - can you please redact and send to me?”
Response
The decision to deploy Operation Brock is not taken lightly and is made jointly between the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum partners – National Highways, Kent Police, Kent County Council, local authorities and the Government – based on several key factors. These include intelligence gathered about emerging situations, traffic modelling and passenger/freight bookings. When Brock is active, all KMRF partners work to return the situation to normal as quickly as possible.
As a KMRF partner organisation, National Highways deploys a quick movable barrier on the M20 when a decision to implement Brock is taken. This can be set up overnight and separates traffic into different lanes across both carriageways, allowing us to hold HGV's heading to the Port of Dover and Eurotunnel and to release them in an orderly manner. This keeps the M20 and other local roads open and moving.
The table below shows data from 2019 up to June 2024.
|
Year |
Start Date |
End Date |
Days Active |
Combined Cost to Activate/Deactivate |
Cost Comment |
|
2019 |
24/03/2019 |
18/04/2019 |
25 |
£ 795,000 |
23km Steel barrier installation & removal Traffic Management set up and labour |
|
2020 / 2021 |
28/12/2020 |
28/04/2021 |
121 |
£ 250,000 |
20km full movement of concrete barrier & Traffic Management set up and labour |
|
2021 |
17/07/2021 |
01/08/2021 |
15 |
£ 250,000 |
|
|
2022 |
22/03/2022 |
06/06/2022 |
76 |
£ 175,000 |
Traffic Management set up and labour only. The concrete barrier already in place for the M20 Moveable Barrier Project |
|
2022 |
11/07/2022 |
04/09/2022 |
55 |
£ 175,000 |
|
|
2022 |
17/12/2022 |
07/01/2023 |
20 |
£ 175,000 |
|
|
2023 |
26/05/2023 |
05/06/2023 |
10 |
£ 250,000 |
20km full movement of concrete barrier & Traffic Management set up and labour |
|
2023 |
14/07/2023 |
20/08/2023 |
40 |
£ 175,000 |
Traffic Management set up and labour only. The concrete barrier already in place for the M20 Moveable Barrier Project |
|
2024 |
19/03/24 |
8/04/24 |
21 |
£ 250,000 |
20km full movement of concrete barrier & Traffic Management set up and labour |
|
2024 |
25/05/24 |
2/06/24 |
9 |
£ 250,000 |
20km full movement of concrete barrier & Traffic Management set up and labour |
|
Total |
£ 2,745,000 |
Documents
This is National Highways' response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.