13
November
2014
|
16:41
Europe/London

Weather delays work on A423 at Kennington

It had been expected that the road could be reopened to two lanes in both directions at the end of November. However the recent wet weather has delayed crucial waterproofing work on a number of bridges, meaning that resurfacing will now take place around a week later than hoped. 

Allowance for delays had been built into the programme, but this had been reduced by one of the specialist subcontractors involved in the work recently going into liquidation, and an alternative subcontractor needing to be found at short notice.

County Councillor David Nimmo Smith, Cabinet member for transport, said: “I am very disappointed to have to announce that the contraflow will be in place for a few more days at Kennington.

“I know that motorists will be upset that after months of delays and were looking forward to the road being back to full capacity.

“The start of work at Kennington was delayed significantly by work Thames Water needed to do and so, in an ideal world, we would be finished by now. However major schemes like this throw up challenges and you have to work hard to overcome them.

“Given the delays to the start of work, and challenges like the discovery of an unmapped electricity cable earlier in the project, the team on site have done well to accelerate the remaining works. The team will be continuing to work at nights and weekends to complete the work as quickly as possible.

“The good news is that there is relatively little work left to be done now and drivers can look forward to the roadworks being removed very soon and long term significant improvements to their journeys.”

Following removal of the contraflow, there will be some overnight lane closures during December to complete the small amount of remaining works.