Highways England and emergency services across the West Midlands have signed up to a new agreement which will see incidents on roads dealt with more swiftly.

The agreement cements the collaboration between the services and sets out clear roles to enable more efficiency at the scene as well as managing the road network, meaning less disruption for drivers.

The memorandum of understanding has been signed by police, fire and rescue and ambulance services across the region as well as Highways England and its maintenance contractor Kier.

The 52-page agreement will:

• improve the management of traffic
• encourage a greater degree of operational cooperation
• enable more information sharing between the organisations
• provide enhanced support for dealing with incidents

Highways England Service Delivery Manager David Yates said: "Any incidents on the network can cause widespread disruption and we all want to manage the situation as efficiently as possible and get traffic moving again.

"With so many organisations often on scene, good collaboration and communication is essential. These agreed protocols ensure our roles are set out beforehand and better enable us to deal with incidents smoothly, swiftly and effectively.

"All of the partner organisations have been working together for some time on this agreement and we are delighted that it has now been agreed and signed by all concerned."

It is essential when dealing with incidents that arrangements for coordinating the individual organisations are established in the early stages.