Britain's most expensive dead end edges closer to completion: £50m 'ghost junction' could soon be connected to road more than five years after it was built

By TOM COTTERILL

Published: 01:29 AEDT, 8 November 2024 | Updated: 01:31 AEDT, 8 November 2024

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A £50million motorway junction dubbed 'Britain's most expensive dead end' is one step closer to being finished having stood idle for five years. 

The 'ghost junction' off Bristol's M49 meant to connect a distribution centre for the likes of Amazon, Tesco, Lidl, Next, DHL and The Range. 

Planners hoped it would be finished in 2019. But it has remained incomplete after five years of construction limbo, with any motorists caught venturing onto it being met with a dead-end.

The fiasco has meant lorries trying to access the distribution hub have had to drive through local villages to get into the business park. 

Now, the highway could finally be on the road to completion after nine separate planning conditions - which prevented work to finish the link road - were scrapped by South Gloucestershire Council.

The 'ghost junction' off Bristol's M49 meant to connect a distribution centre for the likes of Amazon, Tesco, Lidl (pictured)

five years of construction limbo have left it incomplete, with any motorists caught venturing onto the junction being met with a dead-end.

Pictured is a graphic showing the motorway and dead-end junction near Bristol 

The decision made on November 1, said it has found acceptable to discharge the conditions - meaning that now only two conditions remain.

The axed conditions include submitting a work schedule and a construction environmental management plan being approved.

Processes for soft and hard landscaping when creating the link road have been agreed and approved by the council.

Health and safety risk assessments have also been reviewed and found acceptable by the council - and this will include the of construction traffic management plan.

The remaining conditions preventing the construction of the link road now relate to the current cycle path - which was deemed 'redundant' in earlier plans submitted to the council.

The other conditions relate to either after the completion of the link road or during the development itself - but it would not affect the starting date.

The road cost £50m but it has remained unfinished for years (pictured is a sign for the M49)

The M49 Avonmouth junction in Bristol is pictured during its construction back in 2019 

Five years on and the motorway route is still a dead-end with no road leading off of it 

The M49 'ghost junction' has faced years of setbacks and delays after being built. 

Hope it would be finished was rekindled in November last year, when it was reported that it could be built within the next 12 months.

But in December, a cabinet report said that it could still take up to three years to complete.

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

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