£3million to kickstart Birmingham Road improvements
An extra £3million is set to be ploughed into kick-starting improvements on Birmingham Road, more than doubling the original budget for the scheme to almost £6million.
It has been more than three years since Warwickshire County Council first announced it would provide £2.7million in funding to improve the Birmingham Road with a swathe of improvements designed to reduce congestion.
The road has long been a point of angst for Stratford residents and improvements to the stretch were identified as the number one priority of residents during the town’s transport summits.
However there has been little obvious progress since that funding announcement in 2017 and timescales for the work to begin have come and gone.
Design work has been ongoing, but it appears that a major spanner in the works has been the predicted costs of utility works, which have unexpectedly rocketed from £650,000 to £3million.
A recent Warwickshire County Cabinet meeting, members agreed to pump an extra £3million into the project, money which as well as covering the utility costs will lead to additional enhancements to the proposed scheme.
The proposal will now go before full council for formal approval.
The extra cash will bring the budget for the Birmingham Road improvements to close to £6million and the council has set a new date of 2021 for construction to begin.
A report outlining the advantages of approving the extra funds says the cash would provide an opportunity to kick-start and accelerate the project.
The report recognises that Stratford has been one of the hardest economically hit areas by the coronavirus pandemic and that the current problems on Birmingham Road are damaging to local productivity and the town’s visitor economy.
Liberal Democrat councillor Dominic Skinner, who represents Stratford North at the county council, said: “This is really good news, I’ve been pushing for progress to be made on the Birmingham Road Scheme. This project is now in the detailed design phase and I have been in discussions to break down the scheme into different parcels of work which I hope may see improvements delivered sooner and possibly at a lower cost.”
Cllr Izzi Seccombe, said: “Without this extra money the Birmingham Road improvements just wouldn’t be able to happen. The original funds outlined for the scheme were based on the costings we received at the time, however in-depth discussions with the utilities company subsequent to this showed that they didn’t know where all the utilities were and as a result the costs have gone up.
“We are now at the stage where the funding is in place and we can move forward with contracts and hopefully get spades in the ground. I hope work will begin in 2021, I’m very conscious of how important this project is to Stratford and how long it has taken to come forward, I will be pushing this project like mad.”
Cllr Seccombe added that the pandemic had also complicated the delivery of projects across the county this year, but the authority was working hard to catch up.
The Birmingham Road cash is not the only windfall coming Stratford’s way as members also agreed to fund replacement automatic bollards in the town.
Stratford’s 25-year-old bollards, which are located on Henley Street and Meer Street have proved problematic over the years, suffering from a series of breakdowns.
Now bollards in Stratford, Nuneaton and Bedworth will be replaced, costing around £430,000 in total, though the new reliable systems should result in significant maintenance savings.
Cllr Tony Jefferson, leader of Stratford District Council, said: “The extra funding for both of these projects is very good news for Stratford, the Birmingham Road has needed work for a long time and now all the funding seems to be in place hopefully we can see some progress.”
