Norfolk County Council has invited bids for a £30m contract to build the Long Stratton Bypass, which has gone significantly over budget.
The scheme aims to remove through traffic on the A140 from the centre of Long Stratton through a bypass to the east of the town.
It entails a 3.9km single carriageway road, three new roundabouts and two new junction arrangements; two new overbridges, one vehicular and one pedestrian; and a new 450m single carriageway link into the town from the bypass.
The contract notice gives the value of the work as £30m.
South Norfolk District Council granted planning permission for the new road last month.
In July 2021 the Department for Transport allocated £26.2m of major road network funding for the road after approving Norfolk CC’s outline business case, which estimated the current overall cost of delivering the project at £37.44m.
However, the council now puts the latest cost estimate at £46.232m ‘due to unforeseen delays in the planning process, ongoing national and worldwide impacts linked to inflation, such as the pandemic and more recently the war in Ukraine’.
Its webpage says the project would be mainly externally funded ‘with 70% from the DfT’s Major Road Network Fund and 30% from local contributions made up primarily of developer contributions and Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) contributions’.
However, those percentages are based on the 2021 pricing, suggesting that the councils will have to make up the shortfall.
It has been suggested that an increase in the new housing being built in the area may increase developer contributions and CIL.
The target date for the start of construction work is April 2024, with the road open to traffic in the Autumn of 2025.
