Delayed roadworks on A1171 in Cramlington spark backlash from town council

The A1171, close to the Northburn estate and the town’s railway station, has been closed for months so Fred Mence Construction, on behalf of developers Bellway and Persimmon, can improve the local infrastructure.

Work started in the summer to completely remodel the Station Road roundabout, construct a new roundabout at the A1171 and Nelson Village junction, widen roads and build new footpaths to support 500 new homes nearby.

However, the project is running two months behind schedule and a new phase of work is set to begin next week. As a result, residents of Nelson Village and the new housing development at St Nicholas Manor will have to exit northbound on to Crow Hall Lane from a currently closed exit.

Cramlington Town Council says this will cause yet more misery for the town’s residents, who will now have to drive around the outskirts of the town if they want to access its centre.

Mark Swinburn, the county councillor for Cramlington Village and a member of the town council, was unimpressed with the delays.

He said: “It is quite unbelievable that [the contractors] were allowed to wait until the last minute to do the scheme, and for it to be behind schedule by two months and impacting on thousands of our residents into, possibly, mid-2023, as well as delaying further improvement work.”

The contractors will take a break over the Christmas period, despite the project running late.

Mr Swinburn added: “As a town council, we are calling on the contractors to increase their working times to six days a week in order to try to catch up on their failure to deliver the works on time.

"We are also calling on them to bring their plans for mass diversions around the town and genuine timescales to a public showcase at Manor Walks so they can explain to our residents how this has happened.”

Fred Mence say some of the delays have been caused by unidentified services located in the ground, which were not picked up during surveys.

Some design tweaks have also been made to the project as a result.

The existing roundabout at Crow Hall Lane and Westmorland Way is set to face further closures in 2023 – the first around January 9 – which will again necessitate lengthy diversions around the town centre.

The east-west entry will also be shut off later in the year for more work, which will include increasing the size of the roundabout in Station Road.

A spokesperson for Northumberland County Council said: “The council has carefully considered whether it is appropriate to allow this next phase of works to take place in the run-up to Christmas.

“Having carefully considered the impacts of further delaying the overall works required by the planning permission against the additional impacts of traffic in the pre-Christmas period, it has been agreed that the works should continue into this next phase.”