Work begins on £6m road rebuilding scheme in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk

Work has begun to rebuild several rural fenland roads which have developed buckles and cracks because of dry weather.

Cambridgeshire County Council is spending £6.25m on the 11 stretches of road, with work due to finish in July.

The first project - the A1101 connecting Littleport with Mildenhall in Suffolk - will be completely shut to traffic for the next eight weeks.

A council spokesman said rebuilding was needed to "prevent repeated repairs".

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The 11 schemes take in several villages, including Farcet, Ramsey, Prickwillow and Stuntney near Ely. The council said "major road reconstruction" would be required in most cases.

Mathew Shuter, chairman of Cambridgeshire's highways and community infrastructure committee, said: "We are repairing roads affected by extreme weather conditions due to the fenland soils beneath them, so the conditions are very difficult to account for in the design.

"We want to prevent the need for repeated repairs and extra disruption, so we want to get this right."

Glen Owen, regional director of the Institution of Civil Engineers, said the problem arose because of the area's soil type.

"It's a peat-based soil, which retains a lot of water normally," he said. "When there's a drought it shrinks - and you're left with undulations in the road. But the problem is it doesn't happen evenly.

"In this situation it's cheaper to simply rebuild the road."