Middlewich Bypass costs hit £108m
Cheshire East Council has been recommended to approve the addition of £9.7m to the scheme’s budget as well as accept the final £23m slug of Department for Transport grant funding.
The decision report states the budget for the Middlewich Eastern Bypass is now £107.7m, a step-change from the £59m price tag reported in 2019.
Cheshire East Council blames the cost rises on a delayed funding decision, which delayed construction and succumbed supply chains to inflation.
In January this year, the local authority sought a £47m grant from the government to kick-start the then £98m project’s delivery.
Cheshire East Council has now been recommended to accept the £23.3m remaining of the £46.8m grant issued by the Department for Transport earlier this year, having accepted the first £23m grant in August.
Work was initially expected to begin in the summer this year, with Balfour Beatty lined up to deliver the bypass.
It is now expected that work could begin in spring 2026, with construction anticipated to take 30 months.
Cheshire East Council has been contacted for comment.
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The 1.6-mile Middlewich Eastern Bypass is intended to ease congestion and improve road safety in Middlewich town centre.
Cheshire East Council has spent approximately £27m on scheme preparation, ground investigation, environmental works, and land assembly to date.
Contractors’ target costs are being reevaluated to tee up a 2026 start date, a year behind schedule.
Cheshire East Council has been in charge of the project since taking it over from developer Pochin in 2016.
A £59m price in 2019 accounting for inflation would have a value of circa £75m today. To be at £108m suggests the orignal price tag was never costed properly.Another massive public sector step change to the original and still no spades in the ground
By Alf Empty
It’s pretty horrifying how expensive it is to get even simple projects done in the UK now.
By Anonymous
Would it haven’t been a better and cheaper option to do a road from say the salt factory direct to the M6. I would think most of Middlewich congestion is traffic trying to enter the M6.
By Victoria turnbull
By the time you get to build the bypass it will cost approximately one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy five million.
By Senroc
I think a bypass or new road is needed from Winsford Industrial Estate to
Crewe/Nantwich as the road massive lorries drive through, including a humpback bridge is not built to take such heavy traffic. They need to avoid the 530 and be able to have a straight run to the Crewe area.
By Leah