Infrastructure client to spend £2bn in east of England and £1.8bn in the Midlands

Traffic on a motorway

Highways England has announced plans to invest £3.8bn on major A road and motorway upgrades across the Midlands and east England.

The package includes £2bn allocated for improvements in the east and £1.8bn on projects in the Midlands.

Plans in the east include major improvements on the M11, A5 and M1, A1(M), A12, A14, A47 and A428.

Work in both regions will start now and schemes are expected to complete by 2021.

Roads minister Andrew Jones said: “Successive governments have failed to invest the sums necessary in transport. In many parts the system is at capacity.

“That is why we are committing a record £5.2 billion in total to specific transport projects in the Midlands, so that the region can act as a transport hub for the entire country.”

Highways England also said it will be directly accountable to regulators, including the Office of Rail and Road, which will monitor performance and efficiency, and Transport Focus, which will act as a watchdog for road users.

Midlands works (£1.8bn) include:

  • Improvements planned for M42 junction 6
  • New smart motorway around the M42/M40 interchange
  • Development of a new link road connecting M54, M6 and the M6 Toll
  • New, bigger M6 Junction 10
  • Plans to replace roundabouts at A50 Uttoxeter
  • Widening of the A500 at Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent
  • New smart motorway between M6 junctions 13 and 15
  • Improvements planned for A46 junctions
  • A new smart motorway between junction 2 and 4 of the M6
  • Improvement for the A38 Derby junctions
  • Widening of the A5 Dodwells to Longshoot
  • A new smart motorway between junction 23a and 25 of the M1

East of England (£2bn) include:

  • A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon major improvements in Cambridgeshire
  • Upgrading six sections of the A47/A12 corridor in Norfolk across a 115 mile section of the A47 between Peterborough and Great Yarmouth.
  • Increasing capacity on the A1(M) providing an additional 14 lane miles to relieve congestion in Hertfordshire, including Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City
  • Upgrading technology at junctions on the M11 across Essex and Cambridgeshire, from Stansted Airport to Cambridge
  • Providing technology along the A12 in Essex and Suffolk from the M25 to Ipswich and widening the stretch between Chelmsford and the A120 to 3 lanes
  • Providing a new 13 mile stretch of dual carriageway on the A428 between western Cambridgeshire and the north east of Bedfordshire
  • Building 17 new cycle paths including along parts of the A12, A47, A120 and A5.

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