Design specialists busy drawing up plans for Chesterfield roundabout revamp

Last year, Derbyshire County Council announced that Balfour Beatty will carry out nearly £5million of improvements at the busy junction.

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

A county council spokesman said today: "Our design specialists are continuing to work up plans for what is a technically challenging six arm junction.

"We are also working with our contractor, Balfour Beatty, to develop the proposals further."

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

A county council report stated last year: "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."

The county council spokesman was unable to say when work on the project will start but last year's report said it was due to begin in early 2018 and 'will be completed as soon as possible to minimise delay to users of the highway network'.

The report added: "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."