Multi-million pound project to revamp Chesterfield roundabout set to start in months

At a meeting next week, Derbyshire County Council is expected to appoint Balfour Beatty to carry out £4.86million of improvements at the busy junction.

The work is designed to make the roundabout safer and cut congestion.

A county council report states: "Plans for improvements to Whittington Moor roundabout have been in preparation for a while.

"The roundabout sits on the A61 north of Chesterfield town centre and its operation is of prime importance to the highway network in and around the town as well as a diversion route whenever there are problems on the nearby M1 motorway.

"The existing roundabout is a large, six arm junction with three lanes on the circulatory carriageway.

"Because of its size and the number of often conflicting traffic movements, the roundabout suffers from a high accident rate.

"Plans to reduce both accident levels and frequent delays have considered many different ideas including signalisation of some or all of the arms and a prohibitively expensive north-south flyover."

At this stage, the county council is unable to provide details about exactly how the roundabout will be improved.

A spokesman for the authority said: "We should be in a position to provide more detail in the near future."

He added that consultants AECOM are currently in the process of 'drawing up options'.

The county council reports states that the work is expected to start in early 2018 and 'will be completed as soon as possible to minimise delay to users of the highway network'.

It adds: "Funding for the project is mostly from the D2N2 (Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire) Local Enterprise Partnership which is contributing £3.24m towards the estimated £4.86m total project cost.

"The balance of the funding will be found from local contributions from the county council’s capital resources."