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Might be barking up the wrong tree here....but M4 and M3 are lined with cones again where they are "Smart Motorways"...

I wondered if they might be re-instating hard shoulders or something similar ?

Had a look on national highways website but couldn`t find anything.

As said might be nothing, just seems odd

I thought they were adding additional ‘refuge areas’, but could well be wrong.

Maybe that's it, one long "refuge area" would be good

Yes, I believe they are trying to add more refuge areas on the M3 'NOT Smart' motorway...as always only a small number of the extra refuge areas that were promised when all future 'Smart Motorway' plans were cancelled have actually been installed and we now have to wait until April 2025 for the work to hopefully be completed.
This recent TV documentary linked below is well worth a watch if you want to see where it all went so wrong. Even if you get to a refuge lay-by which many drivers don't...you and any breakdown rescue vehicle can't leave until traffic Police have been called to shut the inside lane as vehicles can't rejoin by accelerating up to traffic speed first on the hard shoulder! This can mean a further wait of several hours if the Police are busy with other incidents. The whole flawed system totally relies on technology that does not work reliably 24/7 and even if all the cameras and sensors are actually working, there are not enough people watching them 24/7 or able to shut a lane in the mere seconds that an breakdown incident can become a potentially fatal crash. Not to mention that many UK drivers don't understand that a red cross means a lane is shut, along with many foreign HGV drivers who don't fully understand how our Smart motorway system works.
Petrol and diesel cars have a chance of their 'limp mode' allowing them to proceed slowly to a refuge area with a problem, although even this is dangerous at low speeds or with a flat tyre as shown in the documentary with lorries bearing down on you....do electric vehicles with a problem potentially just stop and always need to be lifted for recovery?
According to the documentary there are no plans to put back the hard shoulder on existing smart motorways despite what has happened....the best we may end up with is a 'dynamic hard shoulder' where the hard shoulder is turned on and off as a traffic lane in response to traffic flow.

Smart Motorways: The Shocking Truth:-
https://www.channel5.com/show/smart-mot ... king-truth

Since the introduction of these "unsmart" motorways, I never travel in the slow lane that was once the hard shoulder. At least that way I wont hit anyone thats broken down. How does that make the motorways better ? It was some politician that has won (not earned) a few million quid in contracts and backhanders. I would rather see ALL the smart motorways abolished and returned to a "sensible and intelligent" motorway where if you break down you dont die