Highways England has announced its next series of major road improvements, with £19.9 million being invested as part of the Growth and Housing Fund. The road improvements are focused into three schemes, which could lead to as many as 10,000 houses being built and 6,000 jobs created. PetrolPrices takes a look to see if your area will benefit from any of the newly announced improvements.
The three new schemes
The first scheme involves an expansion of the M27 at Junction 9, Whitley Way, which lies around 10 miles from Southampton. The project could see up to 3,500 new homes built and 250 jobs created. It is funded by £9.9 million from the Growth and Housing Fund, as well as a further £3 million from Highways England’s Congestion Relief fund.
The second project is the expansion of Gloucestershire’s A46 at Anstey Lane. The scheme could result in the creation of 2,300 homes and 260 jobs, with £5 million funded by the Growth and Housing Fund. A further £2.8 million would come from private investors.
In the East Midlands, the third project is the expansion of Junction 23 on the M1. The plans will involve £5 million from the Growth and Housing Fund, £3.2 million from local growth funding and a further £10 million worth of private funding.
The Growth and Housing Fund
The government and Highways England created the Growth and Housing Fund to help boost the economy by creating safe, efficient and reliable roads for journeys around the country. It is one of the five objectives of their Strategic Business Plan and involves a total investment of £15 billion. It covers major roads and motorways spread over 100 schemes.
Most of the projects, like those above, are funded in part by the scheme, along with private contributors and local authority investment. This allows for major works to be undertaken to improve the road system, as well as the building of more homes to deal with the country’s housing shortage.
Other schemes being funded
As well as these large projects, a number of smaller regional schemes have already been announced. Some are already taking place, with many due to be finished in the next 12 months.
The A589 Greyhound Bridge in Lancashire is being refurbished in order to allow HGVs to cross it. Improving access for larger vehicles to the area should boost businesses, helping them to thrive and continue employing local people.
The A361 in Devon will see regeneration to the dual carriage stretch, which will support local businesses and tourism in the area, as well as enhancing access to the M5. The project will also include improvements to the drainage system.
Meanwhile, around £5 million is earmarked for works on rural and regional roads in Northumberland, making it easier for people to reach top tourist destinations such as Hadrian’s Wall and the Northumberland National Park.
Major program
These projects are all part of the biggest investment in the road network since the 1970s. The government realises that this is a key part of boosting the country’s economy, which is a priority in these politically and financially sensitive times. Not only will the infrastructure improvements make for better experiences for people who use the roads regularly, and for those visiting nearby attractions, but they will also make business deliveries easier.
Since April 2015, Highways England has delivered £4 billion worth of investment in motorways and main trunk roads. 16 schemes are currently underway. The projects have added 175 miles of capacity to the country’s roads, including work on smart motorways to help the flow of traffic on the busiest roads.
Will this investment ensure that the UK’s road network is truly fit for purpose, or is congestion increasing at such a pace that improvements just can’t keep up? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.
Living in an already very congested area, we have 17,000 homes being built, and there is certainly some road funding coming our way, but it doesn’t address the congestion problems, it just provided an alternative place to move the congestion to, 4000 homes on one site gets a junction improvement on the A2 which will mean that as well as going onto the two roads already beyond saturation point into Canterbury, they will also be able to go to the next junction into Canterbury where another housing development is being built, and arrive at what is probably the worst junction in the city leading to the already gridlocked road onto the already over used city ring road (joke).
tinkering at the edges would be the best way to describe the so called improvements.
Add to that, this will only happen once a certain amount of housing has already been built, and it will only be playing catch up anyway.
Investment in the UK’s road network – PARTICULARLY rural A-roads – is pitifully low.
The C21st minimum road standard should be:
Lanes: two tractors can pass each other unimpeded
B-roads: upgraded to allow 60mph driving throughout
A-roads: dual carriageway as a bare minimum
Trunk roads: 4 lanes the norm
Motorways: 6 lanes the norm – some areas (M25 west; M6) having 8 lanes.
Speed limits should be weather-dependent, and 120mph for driverless cars the norm by 2027 (by which time few new cars will NOT be driverless)
It is simply unacceptable that, in a nation with a 60mph speed limit, it is never possible to drive at 60 mph on non-urban roads at any and all times 365 days a year. This thus makes journey time planning all but impossible.
Cost? Several £trillion, paid for by using 100% of road users’ tax revenue on road improvements for the next 100yrs.
Oh – and why are any road works which involve lane closures not MANDATORY as 24/7 working, except in residential areas? By using the contractors’ plant 24/7, rather than 7/5, costs would be reduced significantly.
Recent M6 road works south of Chester – 26 miles of lane closures each way (so 52 miles of construction site), Total number of workers in action? 6. Yes, SIX! Not 6,000. Not 600. Just 6. For 7 hours a day, 5 days a week.
It’s a complete disgrace (DfT paid me to survey these roadworks 3 times a day for a month last autumn and late winter: the lack of useful activity was beyond belief.
Try charging the construction company £1/minute for every vehicle delayed over the same site at 70 mph and things would speed up (in EVERY sense!)
I doubt if they will ever improve the A358 between the M5 and the A303.
They have been promising improvements, dualing and bypasses for thirty years or more. A couple of years ago the government promised they would definitely dual the road, now they have announced that they are having a rethink!
And a few miles in Northumberland
What about maintaining the roads we already have? When will we see ALL the potholes filled properly, thus making our present road system safer before actioning all these grandiose schemes?
Anstey lane A46 isn’t that Leicestershire? Article says Gloucestershire. Also what’s happening to the Nettleton Bottom bypass? As our MP has said you can drive from Scotland to Italy on dual carriage or motorway except for 3 miles in Gloucestershire!
I live in Bescar,Scarisbrick,Lancashire and to say that the lane that runs from the cross-roads of Bescar Lane with Drummersdale Lane/Wood Moss Lane has more bumps than a crocodiles back is a polite understatement.
The lane from the crossroads up-to the railway level crossing is used by HGV’s of both tri axle tractor and trailer and double axle tractor and trailer variants along with numerous huge farm tractors with heavily laden farm trailers.
The ground shakes and shudders when they pass the end of the Swan Close and it suprises me that there has not been a huge sink-hole developed on what is farming land with a tarmacadam strip laid as a miserable excuse for a road.
Nearby roads across ‘the moss’ sink away at the edges on a regular basis to the point that cyclists are at risk of getting trapped in the broken edges of the road and being tipped-off into the many dykes/ditches that run along the edges – many of which do not have marker posts with reflective warnings mounted on them.
Funding or lack of it has been an ongoing excuse along one stretch that in the Winter time with fog,frost and falling snow is extremely difficult to see and is edged with soft edges and a serious lack of visible markers.
Cars have been pulled from the ditches in the recent past but as yet I believe that there have been no fatalities – maybe that is what is wrong/missing.
Investment in proper transport infrastructure in the UK is and always has been abysmally short of standards which even far more backward countries enjoy, so complaints about any particular location or road – even where improvement is desperately required – is never going heard above the clamour coming from just about everywhere. Meanwhile, TENS OF BILLIONS are still about to be squandered on the HS2 rail link to save passengers 20 minutes London-Birmingham. It is a really sick joke. Forget the pittifully few billion dished out in penny packets for roads (for which we’re supposed to feel grateful). A few billion pounds will make hardly a mark on our generally appalling and deteriorating road network. As someone else said, fix the potholes – now a national disgrace – BEFORE anything else is even considered. Sadly, dangerous potholes, with which all drivers, cyclists and even pedestrians have to contend daily, do not make a sexy headline.
its all very good doing these improvements , but they should not be allowed to take so long due to hardly anyone working on them , and causing disruption for months or years when they could be done in vastly quicker time. If you have ever seen road improvements in spain , they do one job at a time , put a lot of workers on the job all day and get it done in a quarter of the time they do it in england
Instead of expanding roads. Why don’t they repair the existing ones. Some in the town where I live are so poor and full of huge pot holes.
In that respect Scotland is a foreign country. Our country, part of UK, is obsessed with freebees. The rest can wait.
Road improvements after road improvements they never end something else needs to be done to improve traffic flow The time will come to reduce the number of vehicles on the roads not just improvement after improvement don’t laugh wait and see
They won’t be happy until the whole of England is covered in concrete and gridlocked.
Sorry goofy ted , but it’s called growth and expansion.we need more houses ,so we need more school’s , which produces more jobs .Which in time brings in more revenue.Hopefully a bigger better Great Britain.
Gloucestershire’s A46 at Anstey Lane
Bring in more people, build more houses & roads, bring in more people build more houses & roads, repeat until full and gridlocked. Britain at it’s best.
I just wondered if my town will ever see it’s third crossing of the river been a problem for over 50 yearsmind you I always think if your not in London area government are not interested
Why are you using American English for a UK based article?
Improve rail links to towns getting the big transport off major roads this will leave more room for more cars
I would just like to see roads resurfaced properly. Not surface dressed as this is a complete waste of time and money. It only papers over the cracks. I would also like to see roads built and also repaired to the standard you see in places like France , Germany and Switzerland to name but a few.
No stuck with awful A14 .
Yesterday, on the M1 from the M25 to Leicester, gantries were showing speed limits of 40, 50 and even 60 even though traffic (when it wasn’t stationary) was mostly doing about 15, sometimes up to 30! 20 continual miles of ‘construction work’ (speed limits, cones etc but no workers) so that eventually we can have no hard shoulder, a smart motorway that’ll be as thick as a lot of the drivers on it, and a road system that probably still wouldn’t impress people in rural Albania.
Hi Myron, I’ve been thinking about you with all this crap going on and have tried to find you on the web. If you’re not a friend of Gordon at Wyggy Boys, ignore this, if you are…remember the Outer Circle Bus and reply! You will spot me in Facebook easy enough if you have a hunt!
With years of neglect, our roads need billions spending on them, the amount our greedy successive governments have spent on them barely uses up the amount of revenue from (ROAD) fund tax ? It’s all too little too late again……nothing seems fit for purpose it seems….as a regular user of the M25/M3 and God knows how many othe trunk routes in the U.K. I could say the same about…..and while I’m on a roll….what about the cyclists around the country……time after time I ask myself why do we share our roads with them ? It’s dangerous! To mix the two together…….unnecessary accidents caused every day often ending in death…..so if serious about roads being wider and safer for us all…..then please make them fit for all….
Roads are improved just so that you reach the next hold up a lot faster
I dare not hold my breath…I lived in Winchester in the 1990s; it only took 50 years to turn the old A33 into the M3…
I moved in 2001 to live in Worthing, West Sussex, with the A27 “major trunk route” running through it; Surprise, surprise – people round here have ONLY WAITED 50 YEARS for a dual-carriageway bypass for through-traffic between west Worthing and east Lancing! There have been three Public Inquiries, three sets of Compulsory Purchases of land and properties – AND WE ARE STILL WAITING!
Will my area benefit from the latest road improvements? Probably not in my lifetime, nor my offspring’s…!!
Just had a lesson in appreciation of British roads. Stationery on Italian motorway & then expected to pay for the privilege! Have to admit it was for improvements though. Don’t know why but Croatian motorways are brilliant. Maybe it got a grant from the EU that we are leaving!
They might have added 175 miles to the truck/motorway system, but how about all the road space that has been taken away for bus and cycle lanes, so creating so much congestion in our towns and cities!
I think it is well over due ,for a bypass from Mottram moor.the daily struggles through this area is monotinous,and can and will only get worse ,until a Bypass is built.
Living in an already very congested area, we have 17,000 homes being built, and there is certainly some road funding coming our way, but it doesn’t address the congestion problems, it just provided an alternative place to move the congestion to, 4000 homes on one site gets a junction improvement on the A2 which will mean that as well as going onto the two roads already beyond saturation point into Canterbury, they will also be able to go to the next junction into Canterbury where another housing development is being built, and arrive at what is probably the worst junction in the city leading to the already gridlocked road onto the already over used city ring road (joke).
tinkering at the edges would be the best way to describe the so called improvements.
Add to that, this will only happen once a certain amount of housing has already been built, and it will only be playing catch up anyway.
Investment in the UK’s road network – PARTICULARLY rural A-roads – is pitifully low.
The C21st minimum road standard should be:
Lanes: two tractors can pass each other unimpeded
B-roads: upgraded to allow 60mph driving throughout
A-roads: dual carriageway as a bare minimum
Trunk roads: 4 lanes the norm
Motorways: 6 lanes the norm – some areas (M25 west; M6) having 8 lanes.
Speed limits should be weather-dependent, and 120mph for driverless cars the norm by 2027 (by which time few new cars will NOT be driverless)
It is simply unacceptable that, in a nation with a 60mph speed limit, it is never possible to drive at 60 mph on non-urban roads at any and all times 365 days a year. This thus makes journey time planning all but impossible.
Cost? Several £trillion, paid for by using 100% of road users’ tax revenue on road improvements for the next 100yrs.
Oh – and why are any road works which involve lane closures not MANDATORY as 24/7 working, except in residential areas? By using the contractors’ plant 24/7, rather than 7/5, costs would be reduced significantly.
Recent M6 road works south of Chester – 26 miles of lane closures each way (so 52 miles of construction site), Total number of workers in action? 6. Yes, SIX! Not 6,000. Not 600. Just 6. For 7 hours a day, 5 days a week.
It’s a complete disgrace (DfT paid me to survey these roadworks 3 times a day for a month last autumn and late winter: the lack of useful activity was beyond belief.
Try charging the construction company £1/minute for every vehicle delayed over the same site at 70 mph and things would speed up (in EVERY sense!)
I doubt if they will ever improve the A358 between the M5 and the A303.
They have been promising improvements, dualing and bypasses for thirty years or more. A couple of years ago the government promised they would definitely dual the road, now they have announced that they are having a rethink!
And a few miles in Northumberland
What about maintaining the roads we already have? When will we see ALL the potholes filled properly, thus making our present road system safer before actioning all these grandiose schemes?
Anstey lane A46 isn’t that Leicestershire? Article says Gloucestershire. Also what’s happening to the Nettleton Bottom bypass? As our MP has said you can drive from Scotland to Italy on dual carriage or motorway except for 3 miles in Gloucestershire!
I live in Bescar,Scarisbrick,Lancashire and to say that the lane that runs from the cross-roads of Bescar Lane with Drummersdale Lane/Wood Moss Lane has more bumps than a crocodiles back is a polite understatement.
The lane from the crossroads up-to the railway level crossing is used by HGV’s of both tri axle tractor and trailer and double axle tractor and trailer variants along with numerous huge farm tractors with heavily laden farm trailers.
The ground shakes and shudders when they pass the end of the Swan Close and it suprises me that there has not been a huge sink-hole developed on what is farming land with a tarmacadam strip laid as a miserable excuse for a road.
Nearby roads across ‘the moss’ sink away at the edges on a regular basis to the point that cyclists are at risk of getting trapped in the broken edges of the road and being tipped-off into the many dykes/ditches that run along the edges – many of which do not have marker posts with reflective warnings mounted on them.
Funding or lack of it has been an ongoing excuse along one stretch that in the Winter time with fog,frost and falling snow is extremely difficult to see and is edged with soft edges and a serious lack of visible markers.
Cars have been pulled from the ditches in the recent past but as yet I believe that there have been no fatalities – maybe that is what is wrong/missing.
Investment in proper transport infrastructure in the UK is and always has been abysmally short of standards which even far more backward countries enjoy, so complaints about any particular location or road – even where improvement is desperately required – is never going heard above the clamour coming from just about everywhere. Meanwhile, TENS OF BILLIONS are still about to be squandered on the HS2 rail link to save passengers 20 minutes London-Birmingham. It is a really sick joke. Forget the pittifully few billion dished out in penny packets for roads (for which we’re supposed to feel grateful). A few billion pounds will make hardly a mark on our generally appalling and deteriorating road network. As someone else said, fix the potholes – now a national disgrace – BEFORE anything else is even considered. Sadly, dangerous potholes, with which all drivers, cyclists and even pedestrians have to contend daily, do not make a sexy headline.
its all very good doing these improvements , but they should not be allowed to take so long due to hardly anyone working on them , and causing disruption for months or years when they could be done in vastly quicker time. If you have ever seen road improvements in spain , they do one job at a time , put a lot of workers on the job all day and get it done in a quarter of the time they do it in england
Instead of expanding roads. Why don’t they repair the existing ones. Some in the town where I live are so poor and full of huge pot holes.
In that respect Scotland is a foreign country. Our country, part of UK, is obsessed with freebees. The rest can wait.
Road improvements after road improvements they never end something else needs to be done to improve traffic flow The time will come to reduce the number of vehicles on the roads not just improvement after improvement don’t laugh wait and see
They won’t be happy until the whole of England is covered in concrete and gridlocked.
Sorry goofy ted , but it’s called growth and expansion.we need more houses ,so we need more school’s , which produces more jobs .Which in time brings in more revenue.Hopefully a bigger better Great Britain.
Gloucestershire’s A46 at Anstey Lane
Bring in more people, build more houses & roads, bring in more people build more houses & roads, repeat until full and gridlocked. Britain at it’s best.
I just wondered if my town will ever see it’s third crossing of the river been a problem for over 50 yearsmind you I always think if your not in London area government are not interested
Why are you using American English for a UK based article?
Improve rail links to towns getting the big transport off major roads this will leave more room for more cars
I would just like to see roads resurfaced properly. Not surface dressed as this is a complete waste of time and money. It only papers over the cracks. I would also like to see roads built and also repaired to the standard you see in places like France , Germany and Switzerland to name but a few.
No stuck with awful A14 .
Yesterday, on the M1 from the M25 to Leicester, gantries were showing speed limits of 40, 50 and even 60 even though traffic (when it wasn’t stationary) was mostly doing about 15, sometimes up to 30! 20 continual miles of ‘construction work’ (speed limits, cones etc but no workers) so that eventually we can have no hard shoulder, a smart motorway that’ll be as thick as a lot of the drivers on it, and a road system that probably still wouldn’t impress people in rural Albania.
With years of neglect, our roads need billions spending on them, the amount our greedy successive governments have spent on them barely uses up the amount of revenue from (ROAD) fund tax ? It’s all too little too late again……nothing seems fit for purpose it seems….as a regular user of the M25/M3 and God knows how many othe trunk routes in the U.K. I could say the same about…..and while I’m on a roll….what about the cyclists around the country……time after time I ask myself why do we share our roads with them ? It’s dangerous! To mix the two together…….unnecessary accidents caused every day often ending in death…..so if serious about roads being wider and safer for us all…..then please make them fit for all….
Roads are improved just so that you reach the next hold up a lot faster
I dare not hold my breath…I lived in Winchester in the 1990s; it only took 50 years to turn the old A33 into the M3…
I moved in 2001 to live in Worthing, West Sussex, with the A27 “major trunk route” running through it; Surprise, surprise – people round here have ONLY WAITED 50 YEARS for a dual-carriageway bypass for through-traffic between west Worthing and east Lancing! There have been three Public Inquiries, three sets of Compulsory Purchases of land and properties – AND WE ARE STILL WAITING!
Will my area benefit from the latest road improvements? Probably not in my lifetime, nor my offspring’s…!!
Just had a lesson in appreciation of British roads. Stationery on Italian motorway & then expected to pay for the privilege! Have to admit it was for improvements though. Don’t know why but Croatian motorways are brilliant. Maybe it got a grant from the EU that we are leaving!