National Highways has fought off a challenge to a £1.3bn widening scheme on the A12 in Essex.
Last month the Court of Appeal dismissed the legal challenge to the decision to grant a Development Consent Order for the A12 Chelmsford to A120 widening, which aims to add an extra lane between Junction 19 and Junction 25.
In a statement on the scheme’s webpage, National Highways said that while the legal process is now over it is ‘investigating what impact the legal challenge has had on the delivery of this scheme and will provide an update in due course’.
A delayed and over-budget resurfacing job on the same route is slipping further behind.
The company has said that this separate scheme to reconstruct the road between Junction 25 (Marks Tey) and Junction 26 (Stanway), which began in October 2022, has moved into its ‘final phase’, but the project’s timetable has slipped since early August when National Highways told the BBC that it would be completed in ‘early September’.
The scheme involves removing the concrete road surface and some of the foundations before rebuilding the road and resurfacing it with asphalt.
It was initially due finish in February, but was delayed because of what National Highways called ‘unexpected challenges’.
As Highways reported, last September, contractors for the government-owned company had to carry out emergency works on a section of the road to resolve a safety issue resulting from the works.
**CORRECTION**
— National Highways: East (@HighwaysEAST) August 31, 2024
There are no planned closures on the A12 southbound this evening.#A12 north is closed between J25 and J26 20:00-06:00. Apologies for any confusion.
All of our planned closures can be found at the following link:https://t.co/sYax4c1DAc#WeAreWorkingForYou pic.twitter.com/h7eSMLzVjT
The scheme’s webpage still gives an end date for the scheme of ‘Summer 2024’ and a National Highways spokesperson told Highways last week that this date is still correct.
However, it initially announced that southbound overnight closures for ‘final surfacing and finishing work’ would take place up to 22 August, with northbound closures taking place last week (26-31 August) and this week (2-6 September).
A week later, the webpage was changed to say that work would in fact take place on the southbound carriageway on 27-30 August, with reference to northbound work this week removed.
On Friday the company announced a series of seven nightly road closures of the southbound carriageway beginning on Sunday (1 September). It has not announced a new date to begin ‘final surfacing and finishing work’ on the northbound carriageway.
The company declined to comment on whether this represented a further timing slippage.
This year, a Freedom of Information request made by the Daily Gazette revealed that the scheme was expected to cost £44m, although the webpage still gives a cost of £37m.
Despite this the company told Highways that the cost cited on the webpage remains correct.
