Provisional estimates show motor vehicles travelled 326.2 billion vehicle miles in Great Britain for the year ending March 2018 - a year on year increase of 0.8%.

Vans showed the largest proportional increase of 3.1%; lorry traffic increased by 1.1%, and car traffic remained broadly stable (with a slight increase of 0.5%).

Traffic increased across all main road types, with ‘A’ Roads, Minor Roads, and Motorways all seeing an increase of between 0.6% and 1.1%.

The upward quarterly trend of the last five years has flattened in Q1 2018. Exploratory analysis suggests this is partly due to the extreme weather conditions between 28 February and 4 March, known as the 'Beast from the East'.

It is estimated that, aside from the weather, the figure for the year ending March 2018 would have been slightly higher than the observed value - by about 0.4%.

Looking at longer term trends, all motor vehicle traffic is 15.8% up on 20 years ago - while Light Commercial Vehicles (Vans, or LCV) traffic is up by 66.3%.