'Unaffordable' motorway improvement plan scrapped

The plan had originally been designed to deal with congestion at the Windhover Roundabout

A project to improve capacity at a motorway junction has been cancelled, the government has announced.

The M27 Southampton Junction 8 scheme was included in the previous Conservative government's Road Investment Strategy 2 plan.

But documents published after Chancellor Rachel Reeves' budget announcement show it was scrapped after Transport Secretary Louise Haigh concluded it was "unfunded and unaffordable".

Previous Conservative Transport Secretary Mark Harper decided against giving the project the go-ahead in June 2023 after a public inquiry in 2022.

National Highways had applied for permission to do the work "to improve congestion, journey time reliability, resilience and safety at the M27 Junction 8 Windhover Roundabout".

It estimated it would have cost between £25m and £50m.

Hamble Valley MP Paul Holmes said he was "concerned" about the decision to cancel the work.

He said it will "only make congestion worse in an area with worsening bottlenecks from overdevelopment".

In a letter shared by Mr Holmes, Transport Minister Lilian Greenwood said the government was faced "with an extremely difficult financial inheritance".

She said the project could not have continued without changes after Mr Harper's decision last year and that redesigning it "would potentially result in low to poor value for money".

The work is separate to the resurfacing work on the M27, which will continue between Junctions 5 and 7.