Ministers have claimed credit for backing a longstanding road scheme that Labour froze under its Transport Infrastructure Review, whose costs rose by around half in the meantime.

On Thursday transport Secretary Heidi Alexander announced that National Highways' M3 Junction 9 improvement scheme, which will add free-flowing links between the M3 and the A34 in both directions, will go ahead after all.

The scheme falls under the 2020-25 Road Investment Strategy (RIS) and was granted a Development Consent Order under the previous government in May 2024.

Three months later it was included in the new government's review of the Department for Transport's (DfT) spending portfolio and effectively frozen.

Despite her government being responsible for previously blocking the scheme, Ms Alexander said: ‘We're building rather than blocking, so that we can get our economy growing.

‘Approving these works, and the 2,000 homes it will support, is just another milestone on the way to delivering 1.5 million homes in this Parliament as part of our Plan for Change.'

 

The National Highways webpage still gives the cost of the scheme as £190m to £210m, but the DfT said it will now cost £290m.

This works out at £145,000 for each of the 2,000 homes, which represent one seven-hundred-and-fiftieth of the 1.5 million target.

The scheme's webpage gives its start date as 2024-25 but the National Highways' recently published 2024-25 delivery plan update put this back to 2025-26.

The scheme will see the number of lanes on the M3 increased from three to four through the junction, as it passes under a wider gyratory, with new routes for pedestrians, cyclists, and horse riders also built.

Transport Action Network said it was shocked at the announcement, which it called ‘a very expensive way of encouraging more housebuilding'

Director Chris Todd said: ‘The original figures presented to the Examination and the Secretary of State included inflation and other risks. So why have costs shot up by over a third to £290m in only two years?

‘It can only be that National Highways is hiding the true cost of its schemes in order to get them approved, or is incredibly bad at its job. Either way it is a damning indictment of National Highways and illustrates why it should be scrapped.'

He added: ‘In this instance there were no legal challenges for the government to blame and the scheme's already questionable business case should have meant it was binned.'

The DfT claimed National Highways will be introducing 22.2 acres of ‘ancient chalk grassland'.

However, the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust has said the scheme will destroy and further fragment important protected habitats in Winnall Moors Nature Reserve and cause local declines in wildlife.