Major A27 upgrade at Arundel deferred
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The improvements have been pushed back into ‘Roads Investment Strategy 3’, which covers the years 2025 to 2030, and comes as part of broader-scale changes to transport policy in response to financial pressures created by the war in Ukraine and Covid-19.
In a written ministerial statement, Transport Secretary Mark Harper said the delay is intended to provide the extra time needed to accommodate environmental design changes. He assured residents the scheme is set to continue nonetheless.
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Hide Ad“During this Parliament there has been a step change in public investment in infrastructure,” the full statement reads. “The Autumn Statement protected the public capital budget at record levels, meaning government will invest over £600 billion over the next five years. The Chancellor has announced over £40bn of capital investment in transport across the next two financial years, which will drive significant improvements to rail and roads right across our country.
"Since agreeing this programme, we have seen headwinds from inflation, triggered by the impact of Putin's illegal war in Ukraine, as well as supply chain disruption as the global economy recovers from the effects of Covid-19. These headwinds have made it difficult to deliver on our capital programmes, and we recognise that some schemes are going to take longer than expected. Refocusing our efforts will allow us to double down on delivering the rest of our capital programme. This will place our transport investments on a sustainable footing and allow us to support the Government’s priorities of halving inflation, growing the economy and reducing debt.”
Andrew Griffith added: “I will continue to support improvements to alleviate the congestion and rat running which impacts many rural communities and for our county’s roads to be made safer.”
The work at Crossbush is part of a wider set of schemes for the A27 Bypass, plans for which were changed considerably late last year, and is intended to allow for better traffic flow, increased capacity and reduced congestion in the area – all to ensure the junction is able to handle anticipated growth in traffic volumes.