Delayed road scheme on track to open next spring

Highways officials say they are "very confident" a major roadworks scheme in Hull city centre will open next spring.

In December, National Highways announced the A63 Castle Street project had been delayed by a year due to "extremely challenging ground conditions".

Work had originally been due to be completed by spring 2025.

Project manager Frances Oliver apologised for the delays, but said the scheme was on track to be completed by the revised date.

Ms Oliver said: "It's a really technical scheme and there are lots of different elements.

"There is really large element of technical design to overcome the ground conditions and, as part of that, we've had to do some slight tweaks to the design," she said.

"We are really disappointed and we apologise for the delays - we all want to get this scheme finished."

In response to a question about congestion, she said they had made some tweaks to traffic control measures as a result of customer feedback and were working with the city council to monitor the situation.

For the majority of the time, she said there were two lanes of traffic running in each direction, with speed restrictions in place.

At the scene - BBC Look North presenter Peter Levy

The A63 Castle Street project has come a long way since construction work started in 2020.

When I visited the site in September, all seemed to be going well, with National Highways telling me the project would be finished by spring this year.

But since it was announced in December that it would be delayed by a year I have been swamped with messages from people frustrated at having to sit in traffic jams every day.

Highways bosses cited extremely challenging ground conditions near the Humber as the reason for the delay, but this is of little comfort to the thousands of motorists who use the local road network every day.

To be fair, it is a monumental project, and one which should make a huge difference to traffic flow in the city when it finally gets over the finish line.

Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.